so the kingdom of God is like leaven like Len it enters into a reality and it works away now it has a life of its own and um the thing that saved my faith in Christ was the little um teaching about the kingdom of God that I found and as a as a wouldbe minister uh began to see work and this is in the uh fourth chapter of Mark the verse 26- 29 the kingdom of God is like a man who cast seed upon the soil and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day and the seed Sprouts up and grows how he himself does not know the soil produces crops by itself then the blade comes up the head shoots out the mature grain is in the head and when the crop is ready the man immediately puts in the sickle because the Harvest has come now the part that saved my faith was the seed Sprouts up and grows how he himself does not know the soil produces crops by itself now what that meant to me was as a minister and as a Christian I do not have to make it happen I do not have to make iten happen and in fact I learned that the more I tried to make it happen the less it would work that what I had to do was to learn to speak the word and live in the kingdom and let the results take care of themselves and that when I would do that I would begin to see change in the people I was ministering to but I had to get out of God's way and let the kingdom work and count on the life that is in the word of the kingdom and so progressively I may I say once again I may be wrong okay but progressively I think I learned not to try to get people to do anything to just stop that all together it was hard because at that time I was Ministry in in Ministry in Southern Baptist Church and I was expected to produce results and I was relieved at one point to hear the story of Dwight Moody where going along the streets of Chicago He encountered a man staggering from One telephone pole to the other and the man bumped into Mr Moody and recognized him and said Mr Moody I'm one of your converts and Moody who was seems to have been a man for all seasons replied you must be one of mine you're certainly not one of gods and I began to see that I could just get out of the business of making things happen happen now do I did I still and do I still win souls yes I think I know what that means and I'm pretty sure I do it but it's more in terms of putting the sickle in of watching for people who need a help at a certain transition but that most of what I am doing is watching the seed grow plant the seed watch it grow Paul used the metaphor of watering of cultivating there's that also but you don't make it happen I think that's one of the most important things for us to understand if we are to participate in the Divine conspiracy as leaders and ministers is to have confidence in the power of the word of the Kingdom now it can come in many ways it can be said in many ways um we don't have to be sticklers about the language but we do need to convey the idea that there is a kingdom of God and that it is something that we can seek and find and I believe that we find it through Jesus Christ and so my idea is that if someone wants to find it then I should present Jesus to them I should talk about him I should in the language that we will enlarge on this evening I should I should speak about the unsearchable riches of Christ I should Magnify Him and lift him up and say the wonderful things about him that are true of him and in appropriate ways keep that before people's minds because really that's the way I believe that you pe bring people to the point of understanding the kingdom and bring them to the point where they're prepared to enter the kingdom of God and Jesus taught about the kingdom constantly didn't he he taught for example the very well-known language that is put into one of our choruses our songs seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else that you need will be added what a glorious promise to seek now what does it mean that's where now we have to back up and there's so many wonderful passages that we could talk about about the kingdom of God we have to back up and try to make sure that we understand just what it is and to do that we have to start with the nature of God because it's his kingdom right and uh so we understand and that the kingdom of God is a spiritual reality indeed the word of the kingdom is a spiritual reality that's what has a life of its own you recall that in John chapter 6 where Jesus has really insulted the Jewish people by saying that they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood or there would be no life in them and you know there's just hardly anything you can think of that would make them M than saying that what a Terri disgusting thing for anyone to say well of course they took it in the wrong sense as he himself explains and around about verse 62 or 3 there in the sixth chapter of John you'll see him saying the words that I speak to you are Spirit they are life do you know that verse the words that I speak to you they are Spirit they are Al it was through the words that he spoke that he communic ated his substance as a person he was the bread of life he's the water he's all of the things but what does that mean it really means that you participate in his substance by taking in his word they are Spirit they are life now that's crucial because now we want to look at some passages here in trying to understand what God is like and the the first thing to say is that God is Spirit but what does that mean well this passage from Exodus 3:14 see in Moses's day there were lots of gods around and so if he's going to go to pharaoh and say now God has told me to come down here and tell you Mr Pharaoh that you should let my people go or the natural response that pharaoh was going to give and of course he did give it was was who is this guy who is this God and now this verse in Exodus is extremely important to get right and in fact it has gotten wrong in many of the translations some of your translations May read that I am who I am no that's not it that doesn't distinguish anybody papy the Sailor Man I am what I am I am who I am uh the fence post is is that's nothing to distinguish God and that is actually not what it says the old version has it right I am that I am and what that means is my being rests on my being in other words I do not depend on anything else this is what characterizes this God he is a totally self-sufficient self-sufficing being that's crucial without that you don't have God you have something under and dependent on something else and now this may Boggle your mind to try to think about it and it boggles the minds of respectable intellectuals today so much so that they wind up saying that's what the universe is because they can't think about a non-physical being they try to put the physical Universe in the place of God and of course it doesn't work very well because everything that we know that is physical depends on something else everything that is physical has that characteristic it depends on something else and that's what characterizes God as spirit so when you come to John 4 and he's talking to the woman at the well and he said God is Spirit right it means is something that is self-sufficing dependent on itself now you have a little bit of that in you it's called your freedom your free will is your spirit and it is free because it is not determined by something else just a tiny little little bit of you but it's extremely important because that's the part of you that relates you to God is your will that's what God wants to know of any person where is your will where is your heart and if your will or your heart is tied into God then you begin to take on all of those glorious features that we've already talked about see it's by tying your will into God you are in a position then to carry out your responsibility before God to govern on his behalf but you do have that little element in you of spirit that is what distinguishes you as an individual and makes you count uniquely for what God is doing and creating the world and sustaining it so now that's very important and and we need uh I can't I I try to do more on this in the Divine conspiracy it's a little bit maybe too philosophical to push hard on but let's just say spirit is spirit is unod personal power try that one on okay spirit is UN bodily personal power and even in you your spirit is not bodily that's why the Learned word world and the professional World generally today will not talk about Freedom so if you say something like 50% of marriages result in divorce any social scientist or psychologist looking at that trying to understand it will never say something like this is because people choose to get divorced and if you didn't want that many divorces you should think in terms of how people make choices and so on rather they will think in terms of causes so causation is the only category of analysis of human life and that is one of the reasons why moral knowledge disappears because moral knowledge basically has to do with the will and the character as coming out of the will whether you are a good person or a bad person whether or not you do what is right morally or do your duty that is a matter of your choice and that isn't a matter of causation now it's true if you're going to shoot someone you have to have a gun so there's some causation involved but you can have a gun and not shoot anyone right because an action requires more than just conditions which make it possible it requires a choice and the category of spirit is a scandal to the modern world and you have to understand that as nothing less than a straightforward assault on the first and second of the Ten Commandments now that goes back to what we were talking earlier about the world not acknowledging God and all of the confusion that results from this that's the heart of the matter now naturally since God is someone that is self-sufficing than the other passage that you're looking to there John 5:26 the father has life in himself and the son also he gave life to be in the son the father has life he gives life to all things where does life come from from God God gives it God sustains it now what is life well I give you a formula here life is self-initiating self- sustaining self directing activity God is the only one who has that kind of life we have some measure of it the goldfish in the glass is alive for now what does it mean to say that goldfish are alive that they have self-initiating self- sustaining self-directing activity now if you come back in the morning and you find that goldfish is belly up you will notice that it no longer has self-initiating self- sustaining self-directing activity that's what life is even a plant has some degree a seed has some degree of life that's one reason why Jesus uses that metaphor of the seed and teaches with it over and over so the basic reality here is God God is in himself as an old Puritan writer used to say God is in himself a sweet Society what was God doing before he created the world people often ask me that he was enjoying themselves and that's what Jesus talks about here look at John 175 what does it say it talks about the glory that the son had with the father before the foundation of the world right and now glorify thou me together with thyself father with the glory which I had with thee before the world was Glory means uh pretty good stuff great stuff great power great Beauty great complexity great richness of their relationship so God is in himself a being that is is too many to be one and too one to be many and the category of Personality that we have which makes it individual is a part of the Brokenness of the human world personality is never meant to be individual well you have to qualify it individual as we understand it see where I can just walk off from you right so all the categories of human relations are meant to go much deeper that's where we get the idea that there is such a thing as casual sex is the idea that well I mean just you know what are you to me now we use now young people use those absolutely disgusting words hookup but you see that's a reflection of a broken idea of Personality how could I do that with a person Paul says when you have sex with a prostitute you are becoming one with them while he's referring to the reality of personal relationships the idea that there is such a thing as casual sex is simply a perverted idea of what a person is how could I come that close to another person and be casual I can't and of course realizing that is and living that out with a rich understanding of who God made me in relationship to the is one of the reasons why once I understand that I'm not going to be troubled with sexual Temptation because I will have moved into a different now I have to get there I'm not saying it's automatic or it's easy but you have to get there if you don't get there then it will be an endless struggle with sexual Temptation the way you get out of that is understanding what the other person is and understanding the kind of relationship that is meant to hold between persons our problem with the Trinity is not so much with the Trinity as it is with understanding persons Jesus says I have the glory again 22:26 the glory which you have given me I have given to them that they may be one just as we are one you see that's what we're being pulled to by the understanding of who God really is i in them thou in me that they may be perfected in unity that the world may know that thou did send me and did love them even as thou did love me again father I desire that they also whom thou Hast given me be with me where I am in order that they may behold my glory which thou Hast given me for thou did love me before the foundation of the world that's the nature of God God is love and the mark of the disciple then back in 13:35 by this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one for another but he just said love one another as I have loved you now when you think seriously about this you you you from a from the point of view we come at it from a fallen human world we might well wonder do I really want that that sounds pretty smothering I mean our human relations are going to be that tight and you know uh what's that song of uh 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover it's an interesting thing slip out the back Jack you know he goes down 50 Ways to Leave who is that Paul Simon interesting interesting thing to read in terms of these kinds of issues what is the nature of spiritual reality now the thing is that if you you you feel a threat here I think if you go into because precisely because you said how am I going to sustain myself if human relations are that tight it's scary and that is where of course Jesus is talking about that this is something that has to come from the father and the son and the spirit into the life of the individual and then it can be experienced as perfect freedom but not Freedom understood in atomistic individualistic terms and of course our culture is eaten up with atomism and individualism and the idea that you that you might be in a relationship which is forever we can't even deal with that in marriage for many people our culture doesn't know what it is to be married they don't know what that means you see because when you say to a person I will love you [Music] forever you're saying something that you can only do if God enables you to do that you can't do that that on your own so if you don't know God you're not going to go into a marriage and say something like that because it'll scare you to death and it's it's stunning to watch people how do what they how they do what they call marriage but on the other hand when you realize what marriage has come to mean why not homosexual marriage H why not if that's all it means on the other hand if it means something like what is understood to mean and this tradition of Christianity there ain't going to be any homosexual marriage it isn't that kind of thing but there isn't any heterosexual marriage of the kind that we normally understand and so these are the kinds of things we have to fight out to get our minds clear to think about where we stand if we're going to stand in a world where we actually love homosexuals and heterosexuals and deal with them in turns of Truth and Love and help them try to understand what's going on so this is really deep see the Trinity extends its kind of love through the redeemed community and 1 Corinthians 13:13 faith hope and love and the greatest of these of Love That 13 see is an expression of the profundity of the Trinity it's a spiritual reality it is not something that you can do at a m merely physical level it requires that a person submit themselves to God and receive from him Agape if you if you go through the 1 Corinthians 13 and don't understand that this is talking about what love does and not what you do it will nail you to the floor I'll tell you because you're not going to do this love is going to do this you submit yourself to love and we've already talked about what that means and I don't have time to go back into it now but remember love doesn't just mean desire see that's that's how people get married today is on the basis of Desire so when the desire is gone what's left okay now so then when we think about the kingdom of God we have to understand that out of God's operation then he's going to bring a group of people who have the quality of the trinity in terms of their unity in love and those are the people whom he can then Empower to do what they want right remember what I said about that God's intention for each of us is that we should become the kind of person he can Empower to do what we want so to bring out of human history a community of every tongue tribe and nation and then they will play a major that should have a major role in the future of the universe well now we need to look at that why would anyone say a thing like that well let's look at Ephesians again and few other passages here and a lot of this seems very strange because we're not given a lot of details on what it will mean we have to think about what it could mean in the light of the nature of personality and the nature of God but for example here in Ephesians 3:10 he's talking about what is God is doing in human history um and he says in verse 8 to me the very least of All Saints this great was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable Riches of Christ and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages had been hidden in God here's that hidden in God stuff again now a mystery as you may know is not something you can't figure out exactly though humanly speaking you wouldn't be able to a mystery in the New Testament sense is something that has been hidden and is now revealed and what has been hidden and now revealed is God's worldwide Plan of Redemption to include all nations tongues tribes and so forth been hidden in God who created all things now verse 10 in order that the manifold wisdom of God now may be made known through the church the eklesia the called out group to the rulers and authorities in the Heavenly places rulers and authorities in Heavenly places those are ways of talking about greater Spiritual Beings that have a place in God's Cosmos we would call them Angels um whether they're both fallen and unfallen is not clear but what is clear is that they do not understand the greatness of God they do not understand it they don't understand Redemption they don't understand what God is doing but they will understand the manifold wisdom of God now manifold mean many sided many aspects to it through the church to the rulers in the Heavenly places you go back to 2:7 in Ephesians in order that in the ages to come ages mean things like eons ages are are um uh groups of temporal um extensions so you have like Millennia and different groups of Millennia and so on they're kind of Ages are kind of like in terms of astronomy they're kind of like galaxies so we have walls of galaxies now that we know about as we have ages and ages of Ages and that by the way is then mentioned again in Revelations 5:22 we've already looked at in order that in the ages to come he might show The surpassing Riches of his grace in kindness towards in Christ Jesus so what does that mean that means that the church is a revelation to the universe of the greatness of God and that of course would mean would involve the things that Jesus did to bring that into place so God's ultimate intention now we're talking what are we talking we're talking about the kingdom of God and human beings place in it another shocking passage is 1 Corinthians 6:3 this is a place where Paul is talking about the shame of a church not being able to adjudicate disagreements among themselves and he even says why don't you let the least of the people in the church decide this let the kids make the Judgment um I mean it's a it's an unbelievably shocking sort of thing we realize that the church in the New Testament period was very different from what it has become in other times generally speaking and I think this can be understood well in the terms that we've already been discussing but I won't try to go into that now but in this passage Paul talks about we shall judge Angels now judge doesn't necessarily mean uh what we would think of in terms of a trial where we're passing judgment remember that the concept of a judge in the Bible is much larger than that it would involve that but not just that so it isn't like we're all that's we're just going to be um passing criminal judgments for the criminality of all of the bad Angels or something of that sort but rather it means that we'll be in positions of government over them that's the that's the biblical conception of the judge is someone who is in a position of government and you can clear that up by going back and looking at the role of the judge in in biblical times well that goes with Revelation 2 five doesn't it and you remember that one right through the ages of Ages there shall no longer be any night they shall not have need of the light of the lamp nor the light of the sun because the Lord God shall illumine them and they shall reign forever and ever and that really says through ages of Ages some of your translations probably give that through ages of Ages and then the final thing I put at we really don't know yet what God's ultimate intention for us is now you know if you're bothered about things like streets of gold and Gates of Pearl and things of that sort just look at the world we have the universe we have we we know a little bit about it not an awful lot we know a lot one thing is very clear whoever made this one can turn out streets of Gold without any problem right all you have to do is just rearrange the electrons and elements that make up gold human beings have for centuries sought the means of transmuting one element into another made a very little bit of progress more probably than it's safe for us to to to have it's not a problem it's like it's like turning water into wine if you made the water in the first place you can do wine right now any if you have the assumption that God made the present Universe streets of gold if that's what you like shouldn't trouble you right or Gates of pearl you just need a bigger oyster so you know you shouldn't be troubled about issues like that people who are bothered about what they regard as the Fantastic nature of the world to come are not long on logic they're just short on imagination because there's really no logical problem with it if you assume God of course if you don't assume God forget it because then all that's left is human beings and nature as they know it so gold well you know they're not going to give up on that I mean if there was a reasonable research project for turning gravel into gold there'd be someone with a government grant trying to do that right now that goes back to the nature of the human will remember what has said about that because that's really that's really crucial but the human will is never meant to run independently of God who made it and who makes the world in which it lives but the truth is we just don't know yet all the details and so God's ultimate intention for us is declared and stands out and that is a part of his kingdom for us and we will move into that as time goes by now um I want to talk a little bit about how the unity of the Bible stands out here uh because uh I think a lot of folks really have trouble with this when they read the Bible what makes what does what does the whole thing hang together around and I want to say that it is simply the progressive withness that you see in God's relation in his kingdom to human beings individually and in groups and here there's some uh repetition of ideas from what we said earlier but just think about how God's winess proceeds from Genesis to Revelation so did God just drop Adam and Eve in the garden and leave them no it was his intention to be with them then they hid and in order to respect what he has is aiming at in human history then he allows himself to hide from them and Humanity begins to develop and given the way that things had been arranged it goes downhill all the way until God says I am I'm sorry that I made human beings so that's where Noah comes in and you have the destruction of the earth a new a destruction of living things on the earth and then a New Covenant with Noah and in time then individuals are selected for a special relationship with God and I'm going to go very quickly here because uh uh there's more that I want to say to you before I get to the end about the kingdom of God but you want to look at these people like Isaac and Jacob and so on in terms of theing kingdom of God and that means in terms of God's being with them uh Isaac for example it doesn't get much Isaac you know doesn't get talked much about but actually he's a he's a pretty important figure and when you study his life for example you see how God was with him and God was with him in such a way that goodness was manifest in Isaac's life to such a degree that his neighbors were scared of him and he prospered to such an extent that first of all I think they asked him to move away because he was getting so strong and so blessed and there was strife and battles between his people and the people of others aik I think it was and then after after moving away you find these people saying no no we want to make a covenant with you because and again the reason is given is because we see that God is with you so with God see that with God principle uh the people of Israel um this passage in Exodus 29 explains the reason why God arranged to have uh the Tabernacle and um it's so God could be with them here's what he says right at the end of Exodus 29 I will concentrate the tent of meeting and altar I will also concentrate Aaron and his sons to minister as priests to me and I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God and they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell them I am the Lord their God God wants to dwell among his people that is how his kingdom is Manifest but it isn't a simple operation he has to arrange the circumstances where this can actually be done and this is one stage through which he did that cutting a covenant with Abraham then with Isaac Isaac with Jacob that was important but now he has a group of people the tribes of Israel and he arranges a new way of being with them which is the Tabernacle now what does that mean you um you have to ask try to for a moment you know try to put yourself in God's position um suppose you were this great being that who merely by presenting yourself to a person could so totally destroy them that's the that's the difficulty now how can he be present with people without destroying them and that would mean allowing them to make choices so you would need something like a place and a routine through which they would come to meet God and these people had already been half scared to death by God and you'll remember after he spoke to them from SI they said to Moses please don't let him do that again you speak to him and then you come and talk to us so this is the general term for this is mediator mediators so God is working out means of mediation so that people can come to him and go from him and that's what the Tabernacle was about now before they had had altars and for example in the life of Jacob you see him building altars Abraham built altars and so on but that was not something that allowed a people to come to God and be with him in a way that they could have a life together in his kingdom so now I'm going to shortcut this a lot just ask you I know that you know your scriptures well just ask you to think about how that developed and uh through the Book of Judges and into Samuel and on through the davidic and Sol Solomon's kingdom and the establishment of the Temple then the destruction of the temple the Exile and the transfer of mediation from a building to a ritual a written word and a priesthood and rinic Judaism emerges out of that and rinic Judaism is the Judaism that dominates at the time of Jesus and afterwards when Jerusalem is restored because the temple is restored is destroyed again judis Jud people are dispersed again and now it is the Torah or the written documents and the rituals of family and Temple that continued the process of mediation and in fact among the Jewish people that still continues up to up to today Christ came to break God's kingdom out of cultural captivity and the big issue as you know in the book of Acts is whether or not you can be a Christian and not a Jew and the word Christian actually emerges in a situation in Antioch of Syria where you could no longer treat these people as Jews because now they were Gentiles and these Gentiles were a part of the group and the expansion into the whole world is disciples from All Nations disciples from All Nations now that was we today have an almost impossible way uh we it's almost impossible for us to think what that meant because the system of mediation that had been present up to the time of Jesus was Now set aside and the new system of mediation was one simple thing Jesus Jesus is the mediator Paul says there's one God and one mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus so you see that's an now so the question can you be uh right with God if you're not circumcised well that's set aside now the whole thing is thrown open to all nations and all that is required is simply the presence of Jesus the kingom is present with him it comes with him you have him you have the kingdom now there was a whole battle that went on among the Jewish Christians about this and of course it was a battle between Jesus and the Jews also and that battle became very very hot and if you read Matthew 23 for example 24 you see what a great struggle it was Jesus really said things that were sufficient from the human point of view to get him killed one of the things he said in that is one of the things that really set me on my ear as a Young Southern Baptist Minister because he said to them you Compass Land and Sea to make one proelite and when you've got him you make him twofold more the child of Hell than you yourselves are well if that won't make you start thinking now about what you're doing because it may turn out that you're just trying to make Souther Baptist and whether or not they're anything more than that might not be all important well of course I didn't mean to be doing that but what was I doing I had to begin to start thinking in terms of the kingdom of God and bringing people into the kingdom of God how how am I doing with that because if you bring them into the kingdom of God then that presupposes a different view of What disciple means and frankly there wasn't much said about being a disciple in that setting and that's a part of a part of the whole idea here that you can be a Christian without being a disciple certainly you could be a Baptist without being a disciple I knew a lot of them and in fact I was clawing my way out of that position myself you see that's a part of realizing that wait a minute there's this God now has opened the door in a new way and he's taken the kingdom of God out of a strictly cultural and institutional setting and put it on the basis of a personal relationship of being with well there so much can be said here but we can't underestimate this and when we come to think about so-called social issues and social justice we have to remember that the real issue here is loving your neighbor as yourself and what happens if your neighbor isn't one of your kind uh when you go to Colossians 3 and you continue continue that passage where he talks about if you then be raised with Christ set your affections on things above that we looked at earlier uh you'll notice he goes on down he talks about well you you've laid aside the old man with his deeds and put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the likeness of him that made him in which and now this is this passage 11 through 14 in which there is no Greek no Jew no circumcision no uncircumcision no barbarian no cian no bond No free but Christ is all and in all in other words those distinctions are now blotted out and you may wonder why cyan shows up in that but cian is just the bottom of the human Barrel in those days the cians were the an ancestors of modern Russians and they were thought to be the meanest people on Earth the cians were people when the barbarians saw them coming they said now there are barbarians and they were I mean you can read this historically but that's why Paul includes cyan in that list is because he wants us to understand that God's intended withness goes beyond all human barriers so it is not a small thing that he's talking about there because human barriers of course continue to be among the things that cause most evil and grief among human beings and you look at the genocides that um or conflicts that are around the world today and you see that well just quickly the church itself is presented as the dwelling place of God God has designed a people to be his dwelling place and that's going to continue throughout eternity and the passage in Revelations 22 takes you back to that now um the problem of meaning in human life we want to say a little bit about this uh because life in the kingdom of God solves that problem um the problem of meaning in human life is the problem of why do things matter of what they lead to and whether or not they lead to anything that is of enduring worth if things are meaningful they carry you they give you a life and strength meaningful work for example we often say I want meaningful work what is Meaningful work well meaningful work is work that counts for something it counts for something important and when you have meaningful work that that makes it much easier for you to get up and go do it right the mark of the presence of meaning in life is precisely a kind of energy and direction that makes life not something you have to just carry by willpower you're able to more joyously and in a stronger way way you're able to do the things that you need to do because they have meaning that means they lead to something and um the kingdom of God comes and says enter the Kingdom live in the Kingdom allow your life to count for things that are good permanent enduring lasting forever and then that is what enables One to begin to live on a different plane now that presupposed es that the kingdom is real is not just imaginary and that when as you interact with the kingdom that carries you that gives you strength that gives you Direction and that means power that has to be learned how to deal with in in Luke 11 Jesus refers to his work in dealing with demons he says if I by the Finger of God do cast out demons then know that the kingdom has come upon you and that power that reality that is seen in his life is should also be seen in the presence of his people uh we talk a lot about signs and wonders signs and wonders are not the gospel but they are the natural expression of the presence of the kingdom and I don't think that we should Center on them but they are given to Christ's people to meet real needs now he he practiced that because in his ministry there were three things that he did with reference to the kingdom one is he proclaimed it he announced it he said the kingdom is at hand he didn't bring it into existence but he proclaimed the new availability of the Kingdom uh in the end of chapter n of uh Matthew 8 he says G verse 35 and Jesus Was going about all of the cities and Villages preaching teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness he he preached he taught and he manifested the presence of the Kingdom that's a reality it's not just words Paul says to the Corinthians the kingdom of God is not in word but in power that is the capacity to do things the the what we talked earlier talked about just in terms of the word of the kingdom and how the word of the Kingdom actually produces a kind of life or a result see that's power now remember spirit is unod personal power it is unod it doesn't depend on the physical it is personal it is consist of thoughts and feelings and will and all those kinds of things uh but it is power now so you don't have the kind of vague sort of the force to be with you kind of teaching because it's personal you dealing with a person you don't learn to manipulate it and so many forms uh that have spun off of Christianity basically say things like well there are these spiritual laws and you w learn to work with these spiritual laws and once you do that then you just click out the results as from a mechanism no you don't do that that's a form of idolatry that puts spiritual reality subject to your will this is a personal relationship and when Jesus goes about proclaiming teaching and manifesting he is living in a relationship to a personal reality which is the kingdom of God so that's why we don't have mechanical results it's because it's a personal negotiation and a personal relationship now um on the secular view then that what I'm saying here is simply that that gives you involvement in a meaningful life that is lived in the kingdom of God there what you do as you work there you're working with something that is eternal your life is becoming a part of an eternal life and results that are gain from that last for eternity if you compare that to the secular View nothing and nothing nothing comes of it that lasts it's all over the sun will become a giant red star at some point and that will be the end of the Earth and nothing that is a part of that will ever last and that is what gives people the what some might call the Tolstoy complex Tolstoy discovered when he was at the height of his powers and the most successful novelist probably who had ever lived he discovered that it was all going to amount to nothing and you read the story of this in in his book called confession a confession and when it you see that it is nothing then what's the point now if you happen to like what you're doing you can live on that and thank goodness for that and one it's wonderful to see how young people especially are able to just live in the immediate light of what they're doing but for example they sense that there is a kind of meaninglessness that lies ahead of them that makes it hard for them to go on and sometimes they can't go on you may be familiar with the myth of Copus that is in classical mythology the idea of a guy named Copus who had offended the gods and he was condemned to roll a rock up to the top of the mountain watch it roll back down and walk back down and roll it up again and that's all he ever did so um that's what some people think of life and if that view is true then so be it we have to accept it we can be brave about it we can be tough or we can as Camu suggest commit suicide um but the presence of Jesus and his kingdom shows that this is not true so the meaning of life for the believer in Christ that's just cover some points on this what is the meaning of life the love and purpose of God for us we are embedded in his eternal life what makes our life eternal is involvement in his eternal life and in Romans 8 you have these um these marvelous verses that spell this out um Paul has just said that all things work together for good to those that love God God and are called into his purposes that's life in the kingdom and now um For Those whom he fornew he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son see that's purpose that's meaning that he might be the firstborn among many Brethren those he's predestined he's called and with these he's Justified he's glor he will also also glorified and then What then shall we say of these things if God be before us who can be against it against us and he goes on to describe the path of life that the person has who is embedded in the kingdom of God so all the hard things turn to our good now you can't have that unless you have a vision of life in the Kingdom all the hard things turn to good even aging the body breaking down this passage in 2 Corinthians 4 16 is the one where Paul is saying even though our outward man is perishing our inward man is being renewed day by day the the trials of the present time he says are nothing compared to the great weight of Glory which they are working and he talks about how uh we are inwardly renewed as we look not at the things that are temporal but at the things that are Eternal and how the temporal things are visible the Eternal things are invisible so all that fits into this picture of a meaningful life uh in the kingdom of God we look forward we are carried forward by meaning drama is a word that we need to learn to use we should be living a dramatic life and it it helps us I think really comes to grips with uh with how our life is going is there drama in our our life drama refers to the ups and downs of meaningful existence in pursuit of good against opposition that's what drama is and may some of us may feel like we could stand a little less drama because the opposition may be pressing us very hard but living in the Eternal kingdom of God now is what gives us this framework so you have the teachings of uh the gospel of the kingdom and I'm going to come back now and deal with this much more tomorrow in more detail but just for now uh if you know these passages Chapter 3 of Matthew when John the Baptist comes what does he preach repent for the kingdom of the heavens is at hand remember at hand does not mean it's about to happen it means it's right here now we can turn and walk into it when Jesus comes in Matthew 4:17 same message exactly the same words repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand chapter five the Beatitudes is a teaching about the kingdom of God blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God and you watch the order in that passage uh and you realize that it begins and ends with the kingdom of God ends with the Treasures the rewards that are laid up in the kingdom of God for those who suffer persecution and um I don't want to get started on that because I want to spend a long time on the Beatitudes later on but it's important to understand that what the what the Beatitudes are basically is proclamation of the kingdom of God chapter 9:35 through 38 is the passage I just read to you about what Jesus did when he went about the various places teaching um well the point is that what Jesus preached was the kingdom of God he uses the Parables they're all Parables of the Kingdom the transition from the Jewish system into what lay Beyond it these passages here in Matthew and Luke are very they're parallel passages and they're very important uh what Jesus says in these passages is that in John the Baptist the law and the prophets were proclaimed that is the system that was present in the Jewish institutions were the officially appointed doorway into the kingdom of God that is what God had appointed in an orderly way to do upon Earth was done through the Jewish system but now he says since John the Baptist the gospel of the kingdom is preached and and the old version of Matthew 11:12 says the kingdom suffers violence and violent men take it by force it sounds like someone coming in with ues and shooting up the place doesn't it but it doesn't refer to that at all although many of the people who have tried to apply Jesus teachings in Social settings have misuse that passage what it really means is they do not stand on the Jewish propriety is you want to see what it means here in Matthew 11 of people pressing in coming and taking by force just remember the little leper in Matthew 8 that comes down the hill towards Jesus and says Jesus if you would you could make me clean now where do you get that lepers aren't supposed to be coming they're supposed to be going he had heard Jesus talk just like that woman that crept in off the streets and washed Jesus's feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair he heard him talk and they said I have hope here so that little man came and said if you would not that you would but if you would you could heal me and Jesus characteristic of the generosity of the Kingdom doesn't just sort of stand there and say you're healed he puts forth his hand and touches him I don't think he touched him like you'd touch a hot stove he touched him with a human touch I suspect he put his arm around him said I'll do it be clean see now what's that illustrate that illustrates what it is to take the kingdom by force that leper did not stand on proprieties he just bulled his way in keep looking in Roman in Matthew 8 here comes a Roman Centurion a Roman Centurion is not supposed to come the Roman Centurion says I have a son or a servant at home and very sick won't you won't you please heal you and Jesus says sure I'll come and heal you now that Roman was sensitive he knew that if Jesus entered the house of a gentile he'd be unclean for 3 days that would mean he could not participate in many of the activities certain the rituals of the temple so the the Centurion just says oh no you don't need to come just say the word he said I know what you do I too am a man under Authority and I say to this man go and he goes this man comes he comes see that's Kingdom stuff the Centurion understood Kingdom and he recognized that what Jesus was working with his kingdom you see that's another illustration of how things have changed Luke 16:16 just puts it very simply it says since John the gospel the of the kingdom is preached and people are pushing into it by crowds they crowding into it and now um I hope you'll have time I know that this is very intense but I hope you have time to look at those two passages in particular and Jesus had said Jesus had said to the Jews in Matthew 21:43 after in one of these uh hotly contest hotly argued sessions that he had with him um he said to them therefore I say to you the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruit of it that is a key passage that's what happened in the book of Acts the book of Acts is the description of how Matthew 2143 was carried out that doesn't mean that Jews can't enter the kingdom of God it means that it was not in their peculiar possession to make it available to the world and Jesus presented as if it were a so now how do you enter the kingdom John 3:15 John 3:5 Nicodemus says he can recognize what God is doing he tries to pay Jesus a compliment we know that no man can do the things that you're doing unless God be with him you remember that and Jesus in an effort to help Nicodemus understand says Nicodemus you can't see the kingdom of God unless you're born from above born from above is crucial not just born again born from above and what does that mean see what that means is that now entry into the kingdom is not mediated through any Human Institution and again he says you can't enter the kingdom unless you're born from above Nicodemus totally did not know what he was talking about and you have to read that whole passage coming up on John 3:16 as an illustration of the Gospel of the kingdom of God and how it now bypasses human institutions entirely now then whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved now there have been some questions about the kingdom in the church and we're going to have to conclude here but let's conclude with this the church does not omit the kingdom the kingdom is present in the church and this passage Roman 14:17 is crucial to understanding that if you don't know that verse please this is right in the middle of a church because what it they're having a they're having a disagreement about eating so typical for human beings to get embroiled in things like this so now look at that verse carefully here's what Paul says the kingdom of God they've been talking about practices in the church right they've been focusing entirely on that and now Tuesday evening we have to come back and talk about this what happens in the church that keeps us from being a discipling body of Christ we're distracted these people were distracted eating and Paul says look don't worry about that I mean he deal eating comes over and over doesn't it seems like half the disagreements in the New Testament are over eating Paul says the kingdom of God is Not meat and drink but righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit obviously he's talking about the kingdom of God in the church isn't he there ought to be an intersection here and when in church matters as we're looking at that intersection we want to understand that the kingdom of God is manifested by a kind of righteousness or goodness a kind of peace and a kind of joy that can only be supernaturally produced the kingdom of God the gospel of the kingdom is the announcement that God is here that anyone who wants to find him can come through Jesus Christ and find the kingdom of God so let's go back to where we started um this is just clearing up some things here um I'll leave that up there but we're out of time and so let me just go back to where we started seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will be added how do you seek the kingdom of God if you were going to tell someone how to do it what would you say to them I would say to them that means find out what God is doing that is the kingdom find out what God is doing and do that find out what God is now how do you find out what God is doing well I would say to them observe Jesus Christ look look at him listen to what he says watch what he did that's what God is doing now do that where you are and you will find the kingdom of God and you will find the kind of righteousness that God has and when you find that everything else you need will be provided good night what a statement that is yes but what about the 23rd psalm the Lord is my shepherd I shall not lack same thing sure it's the same thing except now we have a face on the shepherd now we have a person to point to and say that's where you can find it and that person Jesus Christ that's why we're called Christians right but we can't just rest in the name we have to move to the reality and the presence of the Kingdom well we have not by any means plumbed the depths of this subject but I hope it will be something that you can begin to get a hold of as you now think uh continue to think about the presence of the kingdom and the Divine conspiracy well let's just briefly pray as we close today Father by your spirit give us the things that we need the things that will help us because we know that just just a lot of words doesn't do a thing unless there comes to us that which will direct our lives in such a way that we will know the righteousness peace and joy in the holy spirit that characterizes your kingdom so for each one of us here and for myself above all who is the source of the cloud of words that comes forth won't you please help us to know your kingdom in its full reality where we are and we pray that in the name and honor of Jesus Amen