The Way of the Kingdom

The central message of Jesus was the arrival of the kingdom of God. The Gospel that Jesus embodied, proclaimed, and demonstrated, was the Gospel of the Kingdom. His arrival was a declaration that a new King was in town. As followers of the King of kings, it makes sense that we would be rooted in a kingdom dynamic. It also is important for us as his church to see how the kingdom God was meant to be the natural cultural and overflow of our lives.

The word “kingdom” occurs 120 times in the gospels (53 in Matthew and 45 in Luke). We are going to walk with Jesus into a rich and practical theology of the kingdom for the next 7 weeks.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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The Gospel lesson for today is from Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12. This can be found on page 962 of your Pew Bible. In these, the following verses, Jesus teaches about the character and blessings of those who belong to the kingdom of heaven, revealing values that are radically different from those of the world. Reading from Matthew chapter 5, beginning with the first verse. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain and he sat down. His disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for there is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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One of my favorite places to go is to Scotland. I'd like to go to the Inner Hebrides, to Iona and the Isle of Mull. It's a place that is somewhat, I would say, pregnant with the manifest presence of God. We celebrate those places because of a man by the name of Columba who lived in the 6th century and started a monastery there, and it carried the Christian faith to some of the aspects that we actually get to experience today. So a few years ago, I was on the pilgrimage. We were going to the inner Hebrides, landed in the Glasgow airport, and went to get our rental car. We came out of the rental car office. One of the people in our group said, Wow, that guy had a real accent. I couldn't understand a thing he was saying. Which is kind of funny because he's in Scotland. He didn't have an accent, we had an accent. The accent was with our ears, not with his way of speaking. We're in our Kingdom of God series. We began week one saying that the kingdom of God was the central teaching of Jesus. What he's basically saying is that there's a new king in town. And the question is, will you bow to that king or not? We saw the second week with Dr. Wanda Walborn that we're given this kingdom to Steward to take out into the world as his representatives, his ambassadors of that kingdom. Last week we saw that if the kingdom's not a priority, you'll never get it. It'll always be distant from you. It requires complete engagement. And today we're going to see that if you will walk in the way of the kingdom, you're going to have an accent. Doesn't matter where you live, you're going to sound funny to the people that are from your culture. Paul says it this way we're citizens of another place. Peter says that we're not only foreigners, we're exiles. You're an immigrant. You're a kingdom immigrant who has been placed in a situation where others are going to have to work hard to understand you, or you're going to have to figure out how to translate so that people can understand the fullness of God's kingdom. And we're going to see this in Jesus' most profound teaching gather together in one place. We refer to this section in Matthew 5 to 7 as the Sermon on the Mount. You've read the Gospels. Mark likes to throw teaching in every once in a while. Matthew's collected this entire piece. And I like to affectionately refer to the Beatitudes, the part that we read this morning, as the Bill of Rights. And you're going to see you have no rights in the kingdom. And the rest of it is the Constitution. These are the ways of Jesus that if we will live in them and walk in them and speak from them, we'll make his kingdom present in our world. Now, believers throughout the centuries have had a difficult, a conflicted view of these different passages. Some have said that this is really meant for the kingdom of heaven. They're so impossible that Jesus would never expect you to do them. One of the people that said that was Martin Luther. Now I'm grateful for Martin Luther. We've got a new surge of grace, but Martin Luther was a crazy man at the end of his life. What he was basically saying was, I don't like this. It's too hard, so I'm going to wait for it to happen some other time. I don't think Jesus would give us teaching that we could not live into or live out of. Do you think that? No. And some people have said, well, this was just for the disciples, because they're getting the whole thing going because it's disciples who gather around him. The problem I have with that is at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew summarizes it this way, and he said, when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. So this is meant for all of us. And it begins this way: blessed are. Sounds like the Psalms. How many of our Psalms begin with the blessing aspect? This is to find God's blessing way. And I've said this to you probably a thousand times. There are two paths. There's a path of blessing and there's a path of curse. And we get to choose which path we're on. Has nothing to do with our circumstances. It happens to it has to deal with how we respond to our circumstances. Now each one of these beatitudes deserves a whole sermon, but I'm going to lump them into three categories so we can get out of here. So I have an hour and a half. So maybe we'll go through every one of these. The first four I would call qualities of the inner person, what you become like when Jesus becomes your king. It begins this way: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Now what does this mean? It's those of us who recognize that we bring nothing to the spiritual equation of our relationship with God. To being poor in spirit says, I'm not contributing much to this. I'm here because of you. The second one is blessed are those who mourn. Now let me tell you what it doesn't say. It doesn't say, blessed are those who mope. Blessed are those who mourn. We mourn for our own personal sin and rebellion, and we mourn for the systemic cultural stuff that we see that brings brokenness in our world. That's what mourning is. Third one, blessed are the meek. Let me give you another one that's not saying, Blessed are the milk toasts. I don't know what that means, but I remember growing up hearing that said over and over. This isn't about being powerless. This is about submitting our power to his authority. Whatever opportunity or whatever privilege I have, I bring it in submission to the king. Following it? Fourth one. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Not only righteousness before God in my own personal life, but Mishpat, that Old Testament concept of justice being done for those who are broken. It's taking lunches to kids who might not get them on a weekend. Because we're concerned about the brokenness of this world. You see, if I were to summarize these four, it would be this it's people that know they're needy. Now, this is really good when you know you're needy. But we don't always see that. We have a reflex to go back to the privileges that have been given us, or the education that we've secured, or our bank accounts that back up our future. But to get to the Jesus way is to acknowledge right from the beginning that we are needy. And unless He comes and does something for us, we bring nothing to the equation. There are some results that come from this. So blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not someday. It is right now. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. This one is so contrary to American culture. Jesus is actually quoting Psalm 37 here. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The American way is blessed are the powerful and the bold, because they'll take back everything that they deserve. This is an upside-down message. This will never fit neatly into any cultural category. And not just in America, there is no culture that embodies the kingdom of God. Every culture is broken. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Doesn't that sound good? Anyone want to be satisfied? Not churning for something more? Whew. Chase lounge living. Well, it doesn't stop just with what's going on internally. The next three, Jesus is going to point out how we can live outwardly. And I love the fact that he begins with the inward. Because this is not about performance outward. If I try to do behavioral modification in my own life, I will be living this stressful climb all the time. What happens is we take on the character of Jesus and He begins living these things through us. It no longer is the struggle for me to be like Jesus. I just hang out with Jesus and he seeps out of me. That's liberating in the world in which we live. Three more blessings. Blessed are the merciful. What's it mean to be merciful? It's to overlook offense. You will be offended this week. I guarantee it. You live in an offended society. Ingrid has the slide she uses when we're out on the road. I'm sorry that your offensiveness is so offensive to my offensiveness that it's causing me to be offended. You'll be offended before you leave this church. And if not, come find me, because I'll try to find a way to help you in that. I get to walk out of the mercy of God. Blessed are the pure in heart. Pure in heart means that there's a congruency. How would I characterize that for the land in which we live? No reason to perform anymore. No reason to perform. Nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am valuable because I'm a son or a daughter of God. When I stand before the king, he's not going to ask me what university I went to and how my portfolio did. He's not even going to ask me about my abs. I think I may have used this with you, but I heard it recently and really, I love it. The guy said, I've never been at a memorial service where the person stood up to remember the person and said, Wow, he had great abs. See, we're conditioned to perform. And some of it is out of the right motivation, or maybe some of it is a right aspiration that becomes a wrong motivation. Because we want to give back, we want to make a contribution, we want to steward the opportunities that God gives us. Blessed are the peacemakers. Notice it doesn't say peacekeepers. I've had to have a couple hard conversations in the last couple weeks with believers that I love because there were things that were happening that were bad for the community of Stanwood Church. A peacekeeper would stick their hand to the sand and hope it goes away. But a peacemaker takes initiative to rebuild the shalom and help people get to where they need to go. Basically, what Jesus is saying is you can live like me. This can be your way. And the results, the merciful will receive mercy. The pure in heart will see God. And peacemakers will be called the sons of God. Wow, put that on your resume. That's worth having. The last two beatitudes are a little bit more difficult. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then Jesus moves from third person to second person by using you. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. What's the reward of being persecuted? A rejoicing and a gladness you can't even get your mind around. I think it's so easy in our comfortable world to forget what it's like for many of our brothers and sisters around the world. And it's easy for us to forget the cost to bring our faith down to us through the generations. Oh, what a privilege if I could be persecuted for Jesus. Now I'm not gonna go out and look for it. I'm not gonna try to be obnoxious to bring it on. But I need to know this if I'm gonna follow my Savior and He's a king and his kingdom's gonna come through me, there's a possibility that there's gonna be some backlash in my life. But I want Jesus as King. I don't want him just as my rescue savior. I do want him as my rescue savior, but I need more than that. I need a king in my life. So what's my so what this morning? I'll go back to where Jesus started. He said, the kingdom of God is at hand, so repent and believe. What is repentance? Repentance is moving in one direction, and all of a sudden realizing that I'm no longer in step with God and turning back and saying, God, I want your way to come through me. I need to do this multiple times a day. It's just a reality. I am being let's go back one step. I was formed in a culture that's contrary to the kingdom of God. And I grew up in Ohio. Those people are nice out there. Well, some of them are. And I live in a culture that is moving against the kingdom of God. I daily have to be reminded of what King Jesus says so that I can turn back to his way and walk out his fashion. See, I live in a world of power. I live in a world that embraces power and puffs power and makes power the ultimate reality, seeking to have power so I can win the day. Every time the church in history has lived by connecting itself to a cultural or a political or a government power, it has weakened the church. The most powerful time in church's history were the first four centuries when it had nothing of power within the empire. That's why we have our New Testament and why it doesn't make so much sense to us, because they were people that were stricken all the time. It wasn't until Helena convinced Constantine to make Christianity the official religion that we began losing our spiritual authority. And it's happened at several stages of history. Next come the Crusades, where we used power to put out those that had different religious perspectives than us, rather than loving them as Jesus would have us do. Then there's the period of colonialism where we brought Christendom to other cultures, where the Christianity had to look like our Christianity in Europe-American context. And in those moments, we defiled the gospel of the kingdom. We made it something that Jesus never intended. Come forward to the United States, we've lived with civil religion for years that is defacing the very kingdom of God. And don't think I'm making a political statement for today. This has been going on for 75 years. I'll never forget when it became an alarm in my mind. President Reagan got up after some Marines were killed, and he said, now it's great because heaven has two Marines guarding its gates. Heaven doesn't need U.S. Marines guarding its gates. Heaven has the host of armies sitting there, and he can dispatch angels at any time when he wants to. And out of the civil religious movement, we entered into culture wars where we tried to convince people of our morality. Why would we expect that when they don't have our Jesus and our Holy Spirit? Do you see how this can unravel for us? It's time for the church in America to come back to the kingdom of God. And you can have issues. I'm just the reporter here. Jesus said it. So what's the now what? I think it all begins at the first beatitude. It's the doorway into all of them. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. If I leave here today, or even stand back there and greet you, and then come into Emmaus Hall and try to do these things, I will fail in my own energy. But here's the promise from the king. He said that if we would cooperate with what he wants to do in us, he would come and take dwelling place within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The holiness people of the late 1800s who got off a little bit because it became about legalism, but understood this, they call it the Christ life. Christ will come and live these things through you. It'll be the fruit of the Holy Spirit operating in you. You'll get the same anointing that Jesus had when he moved throughout Palestine. And all of a sudden you'll turn around and you'll be saying, I'm doing the things the Father's doing. I'm saying what the Father's saying. I'm just a representative of the kingdom. I'm an ambassador. And if you could see yourself, you would be surprised. See, when you're close to yourself, you know some of the inner stuff that's going on. I left, what, eight years ago? Some of you have become a lot nicer. Some of you, I'm not sure. But how has that happened? You've cooperated with God's work by his spirit in you. And the inward qualities are now seeping out through the Jesus living qualities. And he's becoming more and more of your life. Alexandra Solzhenitsin has been coming up in my reading recently. When I keep seeing an author come up in different people, I'm my mind is going. I've heard him quoted from the gulag archipelago several times. I'm feeling a need to go back and read it now. It's been a long time. For those of you who aren't familiar with Alexandra, he was a Russian author. He survived being in the Soviet gulags. He won the 1970 Peace Prize for Literature. He saw repression of a totalitarian government that tried to kill a church. And we're finding out it only made it stronger. That movement basically got rid of the nominalism, and the true kingdom people lived through it to the next stage. Harvard University wanted to have him come to their 1978 commencement ceremonies and have him speak. The professors expected him to celebrate the West as the great alternative. They were in for a surprise. He said the West has made the same fundamental error as the Soviet Union, just from a different direction. In the East, the state is ultimate. In the West, the individual is ultimate. In the East, the state is ultimate. In the West, the individual is ultimate. And the truth of the matter, there's no room for King Jesus in either of those totalitarian systems. He wasn't celebrated by the professors. They basically were furious with him. Time magazine said he made a spectacle of himself. So how did he make a spectacle of himself? He simply said, Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. And he said, Jesus is Lord and I'm not. If we want the things of the kingdom, it's going to require that Jesus be Lord. And all of our other kingdom pursuits and all of our false kings that we've put on a pedestal are going to need to come down. I'm ready for that. Are you ready for that? It's time. The church in America is not going to be saved. It's going to become the new Babylon if we do not seek the king. Because you don't have to seek the kingdom.

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All you have to do is seek the king, and the kingdom will come with you.org.