Living In The Kingdom
What are some of the thoughts and images that come to your mind when you think about the word kingdom? Some of you maybe struggle with the controlling side of life and you immediately think, “Well…. every kingdom needs a king and why not me?” You imagine yourself sitting on a throne, perhaps with a giant turkey leg in one hand and a giant scepter in another. Making decisions to better the lives of those in the kingdom.
Some of you immediately think about the palace in the kingdom. You place yourself in an episode of Trading Spaces saying, “You know what this dungeon needs….some color.” Or maybe you imagine yourself with Frank painting chickens all over the palace walls.
Some of you are die hard romantics. You place yourself in every romantic movie of all time. You see yourself as the guy on the black stead trying to rescue the woman of your dreams…or you see yourself as the woman of his dreams asleep and wanting to be awakened by your prince. Or maybe you see yourself as the woman that needs to rescue the guy in distress.. we don’t see enough fairy tales that way.
Others of you have a more simple version of that reality. You envision yourself living in the plush, rolling hills of the kingdom and maybe working as a farmer or blacksmith and having dozens of children and just living the simple life.
In Acts chapter one we are told that in between his resurrection and his ascension into heaven that Jesus spent 40 days with his disciples. It was his last 40 days and what do you suppose he would’ve talked about….maybe a time of remembering (hey Peter, remember the time) or a teaching on the experience of death….we aren’t told much, but we are told that Jesus spent those last moments teaching about the kingdom of God. Verse 6 teaches us a little bit about the disciples mindset, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel. So, I’d like to spend a few moments talking about the kingdom of Israel and I’d like to spend a few moments talking about the spiritual kingdom Jesus referred to and then we’ll try to tie things in a neat little bow. So, before we can really dive into Acts 1 we need to go to Genesis 12.
Let’s Pray
Read Genesis 12:1-3
The heart of God is to have an intimate, close, healthy relationship with every person on earth. That is the overall and eternal plan, but in Genesis 12 God tells Abraham to leave everything….I’m going to start the plan with a single nation. I am going to build a kingdom of people that I can be in relationship with, and from the very beginning of the Bible we see that God is in pursuit of a people and one of the dominant issues becomes are the people in a pursuit of God.
One of the emerging themes in the OT is that this nation was to be holy…..you see that again and again in the Bible. He wanted this nation to be different from their neighbors. God says, “the other nations of the world don’t really desire to know me or be in relationship with me, but I want you to be different…..I want you to be unique….I want you to be holy.” God has such a desire to see people pursue him in the same way he pursues us.
So what happens when God builds a nation. Building a nation of people turned out to be a pretty easy project, compared to step 2, but we’ll talk about that in a minute. When building a nation of people…well, it’s pretty easy really….you need people making babies and lots of them, right?
My grandmother on my mom’s side was pregnant 9 months out of every year for a decade. The families last name was Koenigsknecht and if all her children had followed her example we could have built the nation of Koenigsknecht, a pseudo German nation, ironically none of her children have more then 3 children. We once a get together for all the Koenigsknechts in Michigan and over 1,000 people came. I don’t know what it would be like in the nation of Koenigsknecht, but there would have been lots of casseroles, sausage, and beer. And orange jello with carrot shavings would have flowed like milk and honey.
But, that’s the type of mindset you need right when building a nation….you need people. So Abraham after much dismay has Isaac and Isaac has Jacob and Jacob has 12 sons which eventually become what is called the 12 Tribes Of Israel…when the people needed to be organized it was usually by the tribe they were born into. His 12 sons just go gangbusters and start having babies left and right and from Genesis 12 where it’s just Abraham we make it to the beginning of Exodus and read these words, “the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous so that the whole land was filled with them.”
The real question is how do you build a nation spiritually? Part of God’s plan for Israel was that they would demonstrate that following God is the best thing you can do. Listen to Leviticus 18:3, “You must not do as they do in Egypt where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.” It becomes a resounding plea from God in the OT especially, “As my people I want you to be different from your neighbors….they do this, so don’t you do it.”
How many of you have ever had a really strange or weird neighbor? Raise your hands….if you’re not raising your hand you are the weird or strange neighbor….sorry! I heard of a guy in Kentucky who bought an electronic dog collar for his dog….not the electric fence kind, but the remote controlled kind so you could control your dog. He got curious about how far the remote system would go. He said to his wife, “you take the remote control and I’m going to get in the car and when I honk the horn you push the button and we’ll see how far this thing can go.” So, he put on the dog collar got in the car and started driving….down the road a little bit he honked the horn and his wife hit the button and the electronic shock literally almost caused this guy to pass out. He started swerving and got into the other lane and a truck was coming and guess what…started honking his horn. Zap again. He ended up in the ER with these huge burns around his neck.
God’s desire is to see the people of Israel to be the really weird neighbor. He wanted Israel to be different, not for different sake, but as a result of their desire to be in relationship with Go….that they had been changed by Him. That His ways were the best.
God knows how easy we forget, so he provided 3 ways to really help the Israelites remember their relationship with God.
The first was his word, his law. A real depravity was taking place in a lot of the other countries. Witchcraft and idolatry was huge so God said in Leviticus “Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the Lord your God.” Another issue was that of sexual depravity, so there is a whole section of laws on sex in one part God says, ‘Do not take your wife’s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living.” Don’t mistreat others, because you know what it’s like. Honor one another. So, God uses law as a reminder that they are God’s and they should be pursuing him.
Another way God reminded the people was that of prophet. A prophet was usually and out of town guy that would come in and preach a sermon usually warning the people of impending doom unless they turned back to God. The prophet would usually head out of town from there, because prophets tended to get killed.
Finally, God used priests. And the priests job was really complicated but they would teach and model that God’s ways were the best. The priests would live within the communities and sometimes you read the Bible and a priest makes a mistake and it seems like God just flips out on the guy and we usually think, :”God take it easy.” God knew that if the priests forgot about God then the people would….because the priests were supposed to be the quintessential model.
I would forget my head it wasn’t screwed on nice and tight. A couple of weeks ago I was at the Y and went in and threw my stuff in a locker and went swimming and came back and could not remember the locker I had put my stuff in. I was forced to go from locker to locker looking for my stuff. You know, forgetting your keys is one thing, forgetting where you parked your car is one thing, but sometimes (like Israel) I find myself forgetting about my relationship with God.
When Jesus happens on to the scene the Jews had totally lost perspective…they had forgotten. What had developed in them was a sort of nationalistic pride. The dominant questions were no longer, “are you following God” or are you different, but the dominant question became are you Jewish. Let me give you an example, Jesus is talking to a religious leader in John and the discussion rests upon what it means to follow God and the leader immedietly responds to Jesus, “of course I follow God, Abraham is my father.”
Israel had forgotten and so God sent the ultimate reminder….remember the three….word, prophet and priest. Jesus was the word, he is the great priest, and he was a prophet. He should have been seen as the ultimate reminder, but instead his words were forgotten.
So, Jesus begins to redefine the kingdom. He says, “its’ not something your born into, it’s something your born again into.” In other words, you don’t become a follower of God by simply being Jewish, but following God and specifically Jesus is something that every person needs to make a decision about. He said it’s a decision you make not a family you’re born into. He said that this is not the Kingdom of Israel, but this is the Kingdom of God and as such he can invite anybody he wants in, and I’ve got great news for you …..you’re invited. If you want a life-changing relationship with God you don’t have to be Jewish, you don’t have to have a certain background…the king of the kingdom has invited you, and you’re welcome. Jesus says, the only real requirement is that you believe in and follow me.
This brings us to Acts 1.
So, one of the dominant themes in the NT becomes getting the news of this kingdom out. Jesus had enlisted 12 disciples….God enlisted 12 tribes to begin sharing the news about the openness of the new Kingdom.
I remember when I bought Cheryl’s engagement ring to ask her to marry me. It was on a Monday and I planned to propose on Saturday. I went over to her apartment and put the ring in my jacket because I didn’t want to leave it in my car. I got up there and she was there, and I was there, and the ring was there and I couldn’t contain it anymore and just had to ask the question.
That was the experience of these disciples…..they had fallen in love with Jesus over the past 3 years. He had revealed to them, slowly, but had revealed to them his plan to offer everybody a relationship with God. He asked them to get the word out. They did…many of them traveled and took missionary trips..they left extended family which was very important in Jewish culture…many of them were persecuted and killed, but it was their contribution to make.
You know what one of the most important questions you can ask……what is my contribution to the kingdom? What is God calling me to do?
Some of you are like me….I’m very tribal in nature. I like the idea of settling down and living in one place my entire life. You may be like that…you hate the idea of moving. I read one guy that said, after Adam and Eve sinned the very first time what did he make Adam and Eve do….he made them move and it’s been a curse on mankind ever since.
You know what one of the greatest contributions you can make in the community you live…..be different from your neighbors, in a good way. To live in such a way that it illustrates that following God is the best way to live. We live in a society and a culture that doesn’t need to be convinced about how who Jesus was and is, they need to be convinced that he matters at all. They look at the church and wonder, “are they smoking what they’re selling.” If you’re like me sometimes your life is different and sometimes it’s pretty common place…what do you do if you’re in a common place right now.
I’m not sure what that looks like for everybody….it doesn’t mean we fake it (none of us is perfect and we all have mess-ups in our life, and a lot of Christians just fake through it)….it means we are honest about the parts of our life that need fixing and we go to the God of the universe that really cares. Maybe it’s a broken marriage, maybe it’s dysfunctional family, a hurt relationship. Relationship struggles are pretty common place in America….maybe this means you come forward when we sing and say, “God I don’t want to be common….I want to be different.” I want to see Jesus invade my marriage, my job, my children….I want my life to be different tomorrow. Being different doesn’t mean you’re perfect, it means that you’re honest.
Another contribution we can all make is to take a cue from the apostles. Called to be a mouthpiece for God and spread the word about who Jesus is and the difference he makes. When the disciples were choosing Matthias one of the standards was someone that been with Jesus and witnessed what he did. Listen to what Rick Warren writes, “We are to continue wha Jesus started. Jesus calls us not only to come to him but also to go for him. Your mission is so significant that Jesus repeated it five times in five different ways, in five different books of the Bible.”
Once again, I’m not sure what this means for you. Whether it means to go across the street or across the aisle or across the globe. I just know we are called to go. I like what Erwin McManus said, “The key to evangelism in the New World is the same as it was in the first century—creating environments where people who don’t know God can spend time with people who do.” I guess that will always be the key to reaching out….spending time. If you know Christ I would challenge you spend time this week..real time with somebody that doesn’t.
