Now and Not Yet, Kingdom 101

Shawn Decker

Gospel of Mark • Sermon • Submitted 16 days ago • Presented 19 days ago

Mark 1:14–20

0 ratings

· 1 view

Notes

Transcript

Welcome/Encouragement

Psalm 106:1–5 LEB

1 Praise Yah. Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loyal love is forever. 2 Who can utter the mighty deeds of Yahweh, or proclaim all his praise? 3 Blessed are those who observe justice, he who does righteousness at all times. 4 Remember me, O Yahweh, when you show favor to your people. Look after me when you deliver, 5 that I may see the good done your chosen ones, to be glad in the joy of your nation, to glory together with your inheritance.

Worship

Housekeeping

Announcements

We are looking into dates to start running Alpha.

All of you are familiar with Alpha. Alpha is meant to be used for Evangelism and we intend to use it that way.

So we need everyone to start praying about it, pray about how you can be involved, what day in the week can work for you

Introduction

It is wonderful that the LORD has brought together in this room people from a number of different countries of origin who will be able to relate to what I am about to share.

Now, all of us speak English, but it’s a bit different place to place. English here, and English in the States…not the same, NZ not the same, UK not the same. Some things are pronounced differently, some things are straight up called different things, it can actually be quite confusing.

Australians for example, just never quite feel like finishing words, and as a rule, if it can be shortened, it will be shortened.

When I first got here, thinking I had a rather good grasp of the English language, I just could not figure out why so many words ended with “a”, come to find, Australians just do not like er endings.

For a longer period of time than I am happy to admit, I thought arvo was a place to meet and I could not figure out for the life of me where it was.

Today’s passage is all about the Kingdom, and if we are being honest, it is a bit like English, everyone seems to talk about it differently and not everything may mean what we think it means. Arvo is not a place. Now just like English is important and is fundamental to how we understand and engage everything, so is the Kingdom.

The message and language of the Kingdom, the response to the Kingdom and the Demands of the Kingdom are vital for us to understand for our own sake, and for those who we are talking to about the Gospel.

We see that Jesus, put everything in perspective of the Kingdom, and here at the Vineyard, we do the same thing.

So our passage for today is

Main Body

Mark 1:14–20 LEB

14 And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the gospel!” 16 And as he was passing by along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen). 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you become fishers of people.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, and they were in the boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and went away after him.

In this passage, we see, the message of the Kingdom, the response of the Kingdom, and the Demand of the Kingdom. The Message of the Kingdom is

Message of the Kingdom

The message of the Kingdom in it’s simplicity is as Jesus said it in verse 15.

Mark 1:14–15 (LEB)

14 And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near...

See normally, when we think of spreading the Gospel, it sounds very different than that, am I right?

On social media, when you see people talking about the Gospel, it quickly sounds like a used car commercial.

When Jesus talks about the Gospel, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, it is the proclamation of God’s Kingdom arriving.

Jesus says that the time has been fulfilled and now this thing is happening.

So the question is, what is the thing?

What is the Kingdom of God?

Mark Keown a New Testament Scholar puts it like this:

The kingdom is the coming of the Messiah King (Jesus) to restore God’s intention for Israel, all humanity, and God’s world. The kingdom is the antidote to the fall, ultimately putting right every dimension of human existence and creation itself. It is the restoration of right relationship between God and his people—that is, salvation. It is the bringing of wholeness (shalom) to the world, beginning in Israel and spreading throughout the world.

The kingdom is the primary subject of Jesus’ ministry throughout Mark. The kingdom has arrived in Jesus; therefore, people must respond and turn from sin (repent) and believe the good news (Mark 1:14–15). Jesus then is the inaugurator of this new kingdom. Herod and Caesar may rule as did kings of the past, but they are now trumped by Jesus. The Davidic Messiah, the Son of God has arrived. Satan’s false realm is now being plundered. The kingdom is here because the King is here.

I love that last line.

The Kingdom is here, because the King is here.

Jesus is the first evidence that the time has been fulfilled. He has arrived, God Himself, in the flesh, has arrived to deliver the beginning of the Kingdom Himself.

This is God Himself, acting in history, telling us He has brought the Kingdom with Him, that is His rule and reign here on the earth has begun.

So, then the Gospel, the good news, is that God’s Kingdom has come, finally, and that God Himself has shown up to get it all started.

That just leaves one question, what exactly is the Kingdom?!

As quoted earlier, this is the framework, that Jesus will unpack with all of His parables, He will say, the Kingdom is like…insert parable.

One of the foundational Scholars that shaped the beliefs of John Wimber, Vineyards Founder, was George Elden Ladd.

Ladd, like most Scholars, tended to focus in one area of study and his niche was the Kingdom.

The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God Chapter I: What Is the Kingdom of God?

The Biblical idea of the Kingdom of God is deeply rooted in the Old Testament and is grounded in the confidence that there is one eternal, living God who has revealed Himself to men and who has a purpose for the human race which He has chosen to accomplish through Israel. The Biblical hope is therefore a religious hope; it is an essential element in the revealed will and the redemptive work of the living God.

Scripture speaks a lot about the Kingdom, and it should, it is the rule and reign of God, there is a lot to say about it.

It is not a simple concept that can be quickly summarised in one sermon, but it is something that we all must understand and spend time to understand.

So I will do a quick overview.

Over time, historically, the Jews and then the Early Christians developed language to talk about the coming Kingdom of God, so it would be helpful, to unpack that.

They used the language of two ages:

This age (referring to the present evil age that is ruled by satan due to the fall of humanity) So that is from Adam to Jesus.

and The age to come (the time when satan, sin and death are no more, and God rules and reigns) which is from Jesus’ coming then forever.

If you have caught it, there is overlap in these ages, which is the time we find ourselves in right now.

In the Vineyard and popularly, we talk about this as the Kingdom is both Now and Not Yet

In Jesus’ first coming, He inaugurated the Kingdom, so the blessings, power, and presence of God that belongs to the age to come, has broken into our present reality.

So this is where, healing, new birth, reconciliation, gifts and fruits of the Spirit, the Spirits presence Himself all belong to and characterise the age to come and are available to us now

That said, the enemy although a defeated and subdued foe due to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is still present now. This is where we see the effects of satan, sin and death. This is where we witness some people not being healed, sickness and death.

Eventually, at Jesus’ second coming, He will consummate the Kingdom and it will exist as a full reality in full glory.

Paul talks about this beautifully,

1 Corinthians 13:9–12 LEB

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but whenever the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside the things of a child. 12 For now we see through a mirror indirectly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know completely, just as I have also been completely known.

We can see that Paul acknowledges that right now, it feels like looking through a mirror indirectly, but it will not always be this way.

He is describing the difference of living in the mixture of ages as we are now, and what it will be like when the Kingdom comes in it’s full realization.

Now, at this moment, you may feel a little lost, this may be the first time of considering the Kingdom in this way,

As it turns out…the disciples and Jesus’ audience totally didn’t get it, but through journeying with Jesus, reflecting on His teachings and observing His actions, especially the resurrection, they started to understand and you will as well.

This kingdom language is going to become the common language we use here in Cairns Vineyard to talk about what is happening.

So, that is the message, the King and therefore His Kingdom has come and that is very good news.

Now that we understand the message, let us look into the response of the Kingdom Jesus is after is

Response of the Kingdom

Mark 1:15 (LEB)

15 ... Repent and believe in the gospel!”

Seems simple, and it is. It is not easy though.

What does it mean to repent?

What does it mean to believe?

Why should we care?

We care because this is not only what is asked of us, but we will be asking it of others when we share the gospel.

Remember how I have said, that some church words get so over used that their meanings can be lost or twisted. This is certainly true for these two words.

So we are going to breathe some new life into them by examining how people originally understood them.

Repentance can have a lot of meanings, a lot of feelings, and potentially a lot of bad associated with it.

For some, it can mean behaviour modification.

For some, it can mean feel bad or guilty about some kind of wrong action, be it defined by God or your parents

For others, it can just be what some bible teachers/preachers have just yelled at people, very angrily followed by some gnarly pictures of a fiery underground torture chamber.

What it means is change your mind. The word in the Greek (metanoeō)

is literally to change the mind.

The concept of repentance dates back to the OT with two Hebrew words shuv and naham.

Shuv is a military marching term meaning to turn, it’s metaphorical meaning is to turn away from the current path and re-orient yourself to God’s path as revealed in the Scripture.

So, in this case, in turning from our sins, we both have to recognize that we are on the wrong path and then know the right path to go on. Scipture, referring to itself, is described as a light to the feet, so it is so important to know what to repent towards, as well as what to repent from, because you can easily “repent” from a bad thing to another bad thing if you do not repent towards God’s Word.

In the case of naham, this is term for consolation, the idea being that you would have to console yourself because you have rightfully felt the guilt and shame of the sinful action or consequence of those actions.

Think Ps51

Psalm 51 (LEB)

1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loyal love. According to your abundant mercies, blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and from my sin cleanse me. 3 For I myself know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, only you, I have sinned and have done this evil in your eyes, so that you are correct when you speak, you are blameless when you judge. 5 Behold, in iniquity I was born, and in sin my mother conceived me. 6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts you make me to know wisdom. 7 Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Make me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and all my iniquities blot out. 10 Create a clean heart for me, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and with a willing spirit sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation; then my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise. 16 For you do not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. With a burnt offering you are not pleased. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good in your favor toward Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices, burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then bulls will be offered on your altar.

See, like shuv, the importance is the consolation comes from the truth of God’s Character, namely his Loyal Love, Grace and Mercy.

See we can totally and easily respond to sin poorly, but justifying, deflecting, or minimizing.

As David said, the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart, that is a heart that God will work with.

So all of this has built a profile around this word repentance and we are going to put it all together now.

Repentance is a reorientation of the soul (which is made up of your mind, your will, your emotions) and body.

Here is how it works: Repentance is not a one time thing, it is an ongoing process, more like a lifestyle, where we will recognise that something is off, and that revelation comes from the Holy Spirit through a variety of means, but the action is this:

Our will has to be reorientated to God’s will, we have to want what He wants.

Our emotions have to be rightly re-orientated, sin should make us feel something, when evil things happen, that should make us feel anger and compassion.

I am about to say something that could be challenging, I know it is to me personally,

Having no emotional regulation is something that requires repentance, it is entirely possible to feel the wrong things at the wrong times, feel nothing when you should feel something, or feeling too much.

God is an emotional being, His emotions are perfectly in order. In the proper amount and at the appropriate times.

There may be people here who need healing in this area.

Our Minds have to be re-orientated:

Paul describes this in Rm12.1-2

Romans 12:1–2 LEB

1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers, through the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may approve what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God.

As we can see, the mind, being transformed by God’s Word not the world, can reveal to us the LORDs will that can rightly orient our actions and our emotions.

We know that if we just think behaviour change, it will do nothing. Repentance is the lifestyle of orienting and re-orienting again and again to God, allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal to us, what is not in alignment and then changing it. When the change has happened on the inside, as our mind, will and emotions are aligned with God, so then will our actions.

How are we doing, that was a lot.

Perhaps ask a question if people are looking very confused

The next word is believe. In the NT this is the same word for Faith and in it’s most fundamental meaning, it means to trust by acting on the thing you view as true.

Meaning, to believe in the chair, is to say that you think it will hold you and you act by sitting on it, which then verifies what you thought was true, but if you never sit, you can never say you believe.

The same is true in this case, if we believe Jesus’ words are true, then the action is repentance.

This is what James means when he says that:

The Lexham English Bible Chapter 2

But do you want to know, O foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

This makes sense and I think we know this deep down, that if we really believe something, we will action it.

If we believe the building is on fire, we will evacuate.

The same is true here, if we believe that the Creator God has come in the flesh to start His Kingdom here on earth and that has been revealed by Jesus, then the action is to listen and do what He says. It is that simple and therefore it is that confronting.

Now we know what response God wants from the message, what does the Kingdom Demand from us?

Demand of the Kingdom

Because George Elden Ladd has been so influencial to the Vineyard, I want to let him speak again:

THE Kingdom of God offers to men divine blessings—the blessings of The Age to Come...We have found that the Kingdom of God is God’s redemptive reign. It is God’s conquest through the person of Christ over His enemies: sin, Satan, and death. God’s Kingdom is manifested in several great acts. At the Second Coming of Christ, His Kingdom will appear in power and glory. But this glorious Kingdom of God, which will be manifested at Christ’s return has already entered into history, but without the outward glory. The future has invaded the present. The Kingdom of God which is yet to come in power and in glory has already come in a secret and hidden form to work among men and within them. The power of God’s Kingdom which in The Age to Come will sweep away both evil and all its influence has come among men in the present evil Age to deliver them from the power of sin, from servitude to Satan, and from the bondage and fear of death. The life of God’s Kingdom which will be realized in its fulness when Christ comes, when our very bodies shall be redeemed—that life of the future Kingdom has entered into the present so that men may now be born again and enter into God’s Kingdom—the sphere of His reign, the realm of His blessings...

The question remains: How does one enter into that experience? What demand does God’s Kingdom lay upon us? How does one receive this life? How is the righteousness of the Kingdom to be obtained? How does one find the indwelling of God’s Spirit imparting the life of the future Age?

The Word of God comes to us with a very simple answer. Indeed, its very simplicity involves a profound difficulty. While it is simple, it nevertheless reaches down into the very depths of our being...

The Kingdom makes one fundamental demand: the demand for decision. In Christ, the Kingdom now confronts us. The life of The Age to Come now stands before us. The One who shall tomorrow be the Judge of all men has already come into history. He faces us with one demand: decision.

It is an extended quote, and I could say it no better.

We are simply asked to decide.

We must decide whether to believe all this or not.

We must decide that we are committed to the process of willing repentance.

We must decide to align our will to God’s

Life is a series of decisions, this one matters the most.

This decision is not to be rushed, nor manipulated. It ought to be informed.

My story is that I was going to church for a whole summer, three months. I was about it from the word go. I wanted to be there, I wanted to learn, I was infatuated with all of it.

One day, and I didn’t understand it then as I would have thought myself a Christian, an adoptive dad to me, sat me down (I was 15) on a park bench and he asked me very straight forwardly to decide. He said, Shawn you have been coming for a little while now, I think you have an understanding of what this is all about, but you need to decide. Is this what you want to give your life to or not.

I said Yes, we prayed, then he promptly called all the men in the church and we had a celebration.

Looking back, I am so thankful for him doing it in this way. I was not manipulated, I was not emotionally excited, I made a decision and the enemy can not take that from me.

He can not steal that away, by trying to relegate it to a momentary lapse of judgement or something I did in duress.

There was a firm decision. That decision was the launchpad for everything that followed.

See I didn’t need to fully understand everything, I didn’t have to have faith to move mountains, I just needed a little faith to make the decision to be all in.

The decision then enabled greater and greater levels of faith as I submitted to the Holy Spirit, to guide me and teach me.

Until you decide, not much can happen, because you aren’t really in and your aren’t really out. You are luke warm.

Jesus says in Lk9.57-62

Luke 9:57–62 LEB

57 And as they were traveling on the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go!” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 59 And he said to another, “Follow me!” But he said, “Lord, first allow me to go and bury my father.” 60 But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead! But you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 And another person also said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first allow me to say farewell to those in my house.” 62 But Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand on the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God!”

What Jesus is drawing attention to is informed decisions without double-mindedness.

Mark is clear when we look at our passage, that decision often means leaving everything just like these disciples did, they left a good business, they were not poor, as fishermen with a business with hired help, they were doing pretty okay, middle class did not exist then, but if it did, they would have been in it.

This is the beginning of Mark showing us the cost of discipleship, and the first cost is the cost of decision.

It is often said, when you say no to something, you are only saying no to that one thing, but when you say yes to something, you are saying no to everything else.

So the Kingdom demands that we decide to s recognise that Jesus is the Messiah King, and say Yes, I submit to the Holy Spirit and Yes, I will follow Jesus wherever and however He leads me.

Which as Mark will show us, that means saying no to this world and all it’s enticements.

The message, the response, and the demands of the Kingdom must be clearly understood and explained.

Conclusion

So, did it mean what you thought it meant?

This is going to be one of the only times in my preaching where I will be okay, if you still feel a little lost, or like that was a lot.

It is a lot. It is simple to say:

Jesus came and God’s Kingdom is here, come be a part of it by repenting and believing the good news.

As we have seen though, it requires radical decision, it starts with saying, Jesus you are LORD, I want what you want, I need your help to do all of it, but let’s start the process.

This is the beginnings of being a disciple of Jesus.

As people who proclaim the good news to others we must know the message, the response, and the demands of the Kingdom.

Next week we are going to start looking at what Demonstrating the Kingdom looks like.

Ministry Time

For now, after a message of repentance, we are going to put on some worship music, and I want us to ask Holy Spirit to reveal to us what is not aligned and let’s take care of that.