Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Series Intro

We’re moving into a new series called Kingdom Come.

The Kingdom of God for many is a cloudy idea that can refer to many aspects of the Christian faith:

Heaven and the end of the world (Jesus comes back like Braveheart)

Spiritual warfare (You know the King and you have your armor so you’ll take the devil down)

Evangelism (How many used to sing “I’m in the Lord’s Army”, or “Onward Christian Soldiers” - I wondered what people with no church background might think about these songs?

Someone wanders into church during a hymn-sing thinking, “What did I sign up for?)

Here’s the problem:

The Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew) is a confusing and muddy concept for many Christians.

Partly because it has been used to support things such as biblical theologies (How we understand God through the Bible), ecclesiology (how we do church), and even war (in the Crusades)

The Kingdom of God is one of the major themes in the Bible that binds the story of God’s redemption.

ILLUST - Story of a kingdom in rebellion and the King’s effort to save or Ed Stetzer’s illustration of Tennessee in rebellion during Civil War (Subversive)

During the season prior to the Civil War, both West and Middle Tennessee began to side with the Confederacy - they took a Stand in rebellion.

East Tennesseans, on the other hand, with their mountainous terrain that depended less on farming and agriculture (and, therefore, depended less on the slave labor such livelihoods relied on) remained predominantly allied with the abolitionist Union.

Though living in the midst of a southern state bordering on breakaway, the people in the East were not in agreement with the beliefs and practices espoused by the loudest voices who lived in other parts of the state.

The city of Shelbyville was even eventually nicknamed “Little Boston.”

So when Tennessee officially became the last of the southern states to secede from the United States following Lincoln’s attack on Fort Sumter in 1861, it did so without the full support of its fellow citizens from the East.

Right after Tennessee seceded from the Union, East Tennessee seceded from Tennessee.

East Tennessee was in rebellion against the rebellion.

As a result, they were treated as cross-state enemies, eventually being invaded by the armies and militias of their own state who had been deployed with orders to keep this splinter section under control.

They were forced into a sort of guerilla warfare for daring to insist that the rightful rule of their country resided in Washington, DC, not Richmond, Virginia.

In many ways we as believers in Christ—followers of another Ruler, citizens of another kingdom—are much like the people of East Tennessee in Civil War America.

We live among a world system that, even though ultimately under the reign of a sovereign God, temporarily exerts a competing authority that seeks to enforce an unjust, unrighteous order on those it claims to rule.

The Supreme Court, for example, would later find that the secession of the southern states was an illegal and illegitimate act.

Their confederacy had no legal authority.

Thus, the United States was always legally sovereign over those states.

They just didn’t know it.

And so it is with us.

The world’s illegal rebellion is illegitimate.

It certainly feels real, of course—IS real—but it doesn’t change the reality that God is still Ruler of everything.

Though people may think they have rebelled, they have not—and cannot—ultimately escape the fact that King Jesus still is sovereign.

Stetzer, Ed.

Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation (pp.

3-5).

B&H Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

I would totally understand if this “kingdom” idea has always struck you as being cloudy and mysterious or even if you’ve never really thought about it all that much.

If you have, your tendency may be like many who pocket it away and dismiss the kingdom as a theological concept somehow detached from real life on the ground—lived every day.

To many the kingdom is a spiritual idea that makes sense in the context of sermons and Bible studies but not between regular business hours or on Friday nights when you’re making plans for the weekend.

And if that’s all the kingdom was—a spiritual theme or wordplay that seeks to capture the essence of Christianity in some memorable turn of phrase—we might have the luxury of keeping it at that kind of comfortable, churchy distance.

But the kingdom of God is real.

It’s here.

It’s happening.

It’s right there in the room with you.

It has broken into our time and space and is subversively working to overcome the darkness of our age.

The kingdom of God is a radical rejection of every value or point of view that keeps people in bondage to untruth, blinded to Christ’s mercy.

It is a refusal to classify any person as being expendable or beyond reach, an unwillingness to view any situation as something that cannot be transformed and infused with hope.

Stetzer, Ed.

Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation (pp.

7-8).

B&H Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

We will have a five-part series that look at:

The King and His Kingdom

The Nature of the Kingdom

Life in the Kingdom of God

The Mission of the Kingdom

Do you want to know about Jesus? - Who Jesus is?

Study the Kingdom of God

Do you want to know how to get to heaven or what heaven will be like?

Study the Kingdom of God

Do you want to know how to live a life that is free of worry - a life that full of joy?

Study the Kingdom of God

Do you want to know how to make your life have meaning - a purpose beyond the 9-5?

Do you want to live for something bigger than yourself?

Study the Kingdom of God

Heaven and the end of the world (Jesus comes back like Braveheart)

Why we will use Matthew:

Table 4.2 New Testament book or division Number of occurrences of “kingdom of God” (ESV)

 Gospels 53 

Matthew - 5 (“ kingdom of heaven” 53 times) * 

Mark - 14 

Luke - 32 

John - 2 

Spiritual warfare (You know the King and you have your armor so you’ll take the devil down)

Acts - 6 

Paul (Romans—Philemon) 8 

General Epistles 0 

Revelation 0 

Entire New Testament 67

Evangelism (How many used to sing “I’m in the Lord’s Army”, or “Onward Christian Soldiers” - I wondered what people with no church background might think about these songs?

Someone wanders into church during a hymn-sing thinking, “What did I sign up for?)

Message Intro

**Today, I hope to answer these questions:

What is the Kingdom of God?

Why should we study the Kingdom of God?

The Kingdom of God is important to study because of its connections.

“It is clear that no view of Christ’s person and work which is separated from the context of the Kingdom [of God] can claim to reflect a biblical mode of thought.”

David Wells

A good grasp of the kingdom of God is indispensable for a proper understanding of Christ and the redemption that he accomplished.

The Kingdom connects theology

Covenants

Kingdom connects the Bible - OT / NT - It is the story of God

From beginning to end, the Kingdom of God is the thread which connects the pages of Scripture.

Kingdom in Paul -

From Romans to Jude, the New Testament contains about eighteen references to the kingdom of God or of Christ: ; , ; , , ; ;

The Kingdom connects Heaven and Earth

The Kingdom of God describes the final rule and reign of God.

It describes the place where God is ruling and life is all it is meant to be.

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Matt 4:12-

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