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How the Kingdom Comes
By daniel | March 14, 2004
Hello beloved!
I hope you are not tiring of these little notes. I wonder if you might be getting weary of hearing from me, and I certainly don't want to burden you with more words than you want or to kill more trees than necessary. But each week someone mentions the last note and encourages me to write more. I pray the Lord will silence any “extra” speech on my part and will find this note useful in strengthening you all.
Before you read any further, let me encourage you to grab your Bibles and slowly read three passages in the New Testament –Luke 24:45-49; Acts 1:1-8; and Matthew 28:18-20. I will not have room to include the text of each in the body of the letter, so reading them slowly now and referring to them often would be best.
Luke the physician wrote both the gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts. The passages in Luke 24 and Acts 1 are his accounts of the same events, one account to end a story and one account to pick up where he had left off in his gospel. I remember reading these passages in seminary. Invariably, each professor had a different spin. The evangelism professor would read Acts 1:6-8 and would say, “See, the disciples wanted to know about the kingdom, but Jesus wanted to talk to them about witnessing go into all the world and spread His message and plant the church. The kingdom was not a matter for their immediate concern”
Now, these were well-meaning fellows, to say the very least, but this matter of the kingdom of God being here now has been so obscured for so many centuries that seminaries and other institutes of theological education have inadvertently managed to totally abandon the only thing Jesus is doing: consciously, intentionally bringing the kingdom of God to the earth. What does this mean for you and me? Well, it means that nearly every local church (and certainly every denominational organization) is completely missing the point with most of what we do. And so you might be too.
Look again at Acts 1:1-8. In verse 3 we find Jesus speaking to the disciples, after His resurrection, for forty days “of the things concerning the kingdom of God” In verse 6 we find them gathered together, and they ask Jesus a question about the kingdom. Here is the problem. They were still a little confused as to what the kingdom is, so their question — about when the kingdom would come — was naturally misdirected.
So, Jesus answers their when question with a gentle “none of your business” and proceeds to explain to them how the kingdom would come. They would receive the Spirit of God, and would then become “witnesses” — in demonstration and declaration — of Jesus. This “witness” was to spread from Jerusalem into its surrounds and ultimately to the very remotest parts of the earth. See, God is bringing His kingdom to earth – New York to New Delhi, Jerusalem to Java – and He is doing it from the inside out.
This is why in the parallel passage in Luke 24 Jesus describes the process as “repentance for the remission of sins” being “proclaimed to all the nations.” All “the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ” through this process. People will be invited to repent and have their sins removed so that they can become citizens of a new kingdom, a kingdom where an all-wise, all-good, holy King can rule people and homes and relationships and eventually communities and peoples and nations in the here and now.
Slowly, as saints mature and genuine, New Testament churches are grown and edified, the localities around them are faced with an unavoidable “witness” to the reality of a kingdom-not-of-this-world, but nonetheless very real and very present. As the Spirit leads, more come in and some are sent out (as in Acts 13) to carry the message (which is the seed of the kingdom) to peoples and nations and localities where it has not been. They will invite individuals and families to submit to Jesus as Lord (thus making His kingship a practical reality in their lives) and find salvation from other kingdoms (Satan's, their own personal self-rule) in Him.
These saints will be grown and matured in the context of their own every day lives, led by the Spirit and mentored by the apprentices of Jesus who are older in the Way. In time, these will discover their gifts as they gather with and serve the local body of Christ. That church in that locality will come to maturity as well – an undeniable witness to the reality of Christ (John 17) – and will also participate in infiltrating still other communities and nations and peoples with the kingdom of God.
And this kind of perspective is what makes Matthew 28:18-20 so explosive. The gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as King of God's kingdom. It opens with Jesus as King, referring to Him as being from the kingly line of David. Likewise, it closes with Him as King, claiming, “All authority in heaven and earth is now mine.” What follows that statement is Jesus' simple and incomparably brilliant plan to take over the world with the goodness of God. “Therefore you go and make apprentices to me from every ethnic group in the world. Lead them through the pledge of allegiance to the Triune God (baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Then, train them to live exactly the way I trained you to live (teach them to obey all I have commanded you)” [paraphrase].
Those words are not just a strategy for evangelism. They are the manifesto of the greatest Revolutionary the world has ever known. The kingdom of God is not about saving souls. It is about the kingdom of God, and souls are saved for the kingdom. People are progressively made new for the kingdom. Broken individuals are brought into the healing and transforming and life-orienting family of God for the kingdom.
If you get this you, like me, will want to know what to do about it. Go. Go to your neighbor or to Nairobi, to the office or to off the continent. Let the Spirit and the saints guide your decision as to which. Rearrange your time around bringing the kingdom to earth – to do that simply rearrange your time around meeting with the saints… God will see to the rest. Rearrange your financial life around caring for the saints and sending some to peoples who have no hope of hearing the wonderful news that Another Kingdom is presently available for them to live in. Rearrange yourself. Decide you are for the kingdom and stop trying to subtly see the kingdom as for you. Take Jesus' yoke upon you. Not only will you find rest, but He will find an asset in you, and you will find the meaning of your life.
I love you all so very much.
For King and kingdom,
Virgil
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