Becoming…Kingdom Minded
· Me
o Puzzle tops
§ Have you ever tried to do a puzzle without the picture on the top? What if you had a picture with giraffes on it and a sunset, but you had nothing but dark pieces, the pieces didn’t match the cover
o Intro series
o For us to become all that God wants us to become, we need to understand what God calls us to, specifically, what is the core message of the Bible?
o Maybe a different way to ask that question is, why did Jesus come to earth?
o You might think, what do puzzle covers have to do with the core message of the Bible? A lot, because I think many of us come to the Bible with the wrong cover on it, the wrong picture
o It matters that we have the right picture of the Bible, that we understand what the core message of Jesus is
o Many of you are kicking the tires of Christianity, trying to understand what Jesus is all about. Some of you have been walking with Jesus for a long time, what are you inviting others into? Do you know what God expects from you?
o This is a huge deal
· You
o According to most studies, Christians and non-Christians believe the core message of the Bible and Jesus for that matter is how one gets to heaven
o The reason is because that is all they ever hear about when it comes to Christianity
o Go into most churches today, you will hear the gospel, which is a great thing. Turn on TV preachers and you will hear the gospel, again a good thing. But is it the right gospel?
o I would submit to you that the core message of the Bible is the gospel, but what is the gospel?
o Here is a question: what gospel did Jesus preach?
· God
o If you have a bible, open it to Matthew 6, verse 9 (p. 691)
o Tim Keller said, “A generation ago Christians agreed on "the simple gospel": (1) God made you and wants to have a relationship with you, (2) but your sin separates you from God. (3) Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, (4) so if you repent from sins and trust in him for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified, and accepted freely by grace, and indwelt with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.”
o But is that the gospel? Is that the gospel Jesus preached? Is that the core message of the Bible?
o Listen to the words of Jesus
§ Luke 4:43: "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose."
§ Luke 9:2: Jesus sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.
§ Matthew 3:2: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
§ Luke 17:20: 20Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, 21nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you."
§ Mark 1:15: the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
o So what did Jesus preach?
§ Jesus preached about the kingdom of God
§ He said the kingdom of God is here, it is at hand, it is in you
§ The kingdom of God in the New Testament refers to here and now, but also to a kingdom that is to come
· Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God 84 times in the gospels, 47 times he described the kingdom, 28 times he described it as something here and now, only 9 times he described it as a future thing to come
· It is a present, here and now thing, as well as a thing to come, but look at the emphasis that Jesus puts on it, we often don’t put the same emphasis on it
§ Steve Chalke said, “So much of the “gospel” we peddle is all about the future tense, not the present reality. We live with the idea that the gospel’s chief aim is to make us fit for heaven, when in reality Jesus’ message is focused on making us citizens and recipients of the Kingdom of God today. Too often we present Christianity as a faith to die by, asking questions such as, “If you were to die tonight, where do you think you would spend eternity?” However, Jesus’ message is about a faith to live, love, work and play by, today.”
§ Here is a question I get when I talk about this with people. Someone will ask, “So is the gospel for how we live right now or how we get to heaven?” my answer, “Yes.”
§ It is coming to terms with the question of what God’s goal is. Is his goal to populate heaven or bless the earth? Yes.
o What the gospel is not
§ What has been known as the gospel is small, it is individualistic and it is incomplete
§ The emphasis is simply on what happens when you die and if Jesus’ message just deals with what happens when you die, what about how you live.
§ Brian McLaren said, “The Bible’s purpose, we assume, is to explain how to go to heaven, to legitimize certain religious institutions, to define in detail universal timeless truths, to provide a detailed timeline for the end of the world, and so on. But based on that assumption, there appears to be a lot of junk revelation in there, a lot of extraneous material about history, agriculture, economics, art, ethics, and other “earthly” things, extra stuff that doesn’t really matter in relation to getting souls to heaven. So, what might we discover if we become willing to question that assumption? Then we could test an alternative hypothesis: that the Bible instead is the story of the partnership between God and humanity to save and transform all of human society and avert global self-destruction. Perhaps if we read the Bible afresh from this perspective, a lot of the supposed filler will suddenly come alive with new importance and meaning. Perhaps what seemed to be extraneous material will turn out to be profoundly relevant.”
§ Many times the question is asked “if you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” While I understand the question and the heart behind it, I think a better question is “If you were to live another 30 years, what kind of person would you be? What impact will you make on earth? Will you move the kingdom of God further on earth?”
§ The gospel has often focused simply on the transferring of our sins to Jesus on the cross
§ The problem is that we focus strictly on heaven and many of us have really small views of heaven
§ I think we had a larger view of heaven and living in God’s kingdom, maybe that would change how we lived, it also affects that we are prone to sin
§ The gospel is supposed to transform us, it should rock our worlds, but many people who claim to be followers of Jesus don’t seem to be very transformed
§ Mike Gunn said, “The Gospel is not Therapy, is not Law/Moralism, is not “Self Discovery”, is not “Enlightenment”, is not Social Restructuring/Nationalism”
· I cringed as I saw countless Christians this past November waving country first signs. Nothing wrong with supporting your country, but as a follower of Jesus, the kingdom of God comes first
· I talked with some Pastors about this and they told me, it’s assumed that God comes first, they’re just holding signs.
o What the gospel is
§ The words of Jesus, the gospel is the kingdom of God
§ 3 things make up the gospel
§ Incarnation
· What often happens when we think about the gospel is that it is talked in terms of taking away sins
· What we miss is that Jesus came to earth, he became like us, this is known as incarnation
· We are to incarnate ourselves in culture, meaning, we are to live within our circles and influence those places, bringing the gospel into those places
· What we do is we jump from Genesis 3, when sin entered the world and we move to John 3 or Romans 3 where it talks about Jesus’ death on the cross, the problem with that is there is a large story in between those points
· Scot McKnight said, “We cannot skip from the Fall to the Cross. God chose, instead of sending his Son to redeem Adam and Eve in Genesis 4, to wait. And what God did between the time of Adam and Eve and Jesus Christ was to work redemption in the form of community. The Old Testament is about Israel; the New Testament is about Jesus and the church. The Bible is about God's people, the community of faith. The church is not an institution that provides benefits for individual Christians so they can carry on their personal relationship with God until that church can no longer provide what they need. Instead, the church is the focus of God's redemptive work on earth in the present age.”
· We are to incarnate ourselves in a city, in a community, in a way of life and invite others into that way of life, that way of living
§ Atonement
· This is the part of the gospel we are the most familiar with, the one talked about the most, Jesus on the cross, this is where why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter and what we remember when we take communion
· Jesus came to earth to restore things, to do that, to take away sin and create a way for restoration in creation as well as with our relationship with God, he had to take our sins upon himself on the cross
· The problem with just focusing on atonement is that every articulation of the gospel focuses exclusively on Jesus Christ and his role as redeemer. It is obviously true and good news that Jesus and his life and work function redemptively. But when we reduce Jesus to redeemer only, we miss another essential element of our faith: that Jesus is also creator.
· Brian McLaren said, “When Paul looked at the cross, he saw that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not just counting people’s sins against them.” Somehow, for him, the defeat of Christ on that Roman cross – the moment when God appears weak and foolish, outsmarted as it were by human evil – provided the means by which God exposed and judged the evil of empire and religion, and in them, the evil of every individual human being, so that humanity could be forgiven and reconciled to God.”
§ Restoration
· The little gospel promises me personal salvation and eternal life. But the robust gospel doesn't stop there. It also promises a new society and a new creation. Any gospel that is not announcing a new society at work in the world, what the Apostle Paul calls the church, it simply is not the gospel
· This is why we do missional projects
· The gospel of God is to restore God’s creation
· The gospel is to redeem both the material and spiritual worlds. Jesus will someday destroy hunger, disease, poverty, injustice, sin and death itself.
· We are partnering in that as his followers, our job is to help with the restoration of all creation. Not just spiritual, but also emotional, relational, intellectual, sexual.
· Tim Keel said, “I am discovering that our world is consumed with questions of creation—even if they are not framed that way explicitly. We can hear these questions whenever our contemporaries ask, "What does it mean to be human, especially as more and more of life is influenced by and even dependent on technology?" "How do we understand gender and sexuality and how both are expressed?" "How do we live in an ecologically responsible way?" "How might a just economy function sustainably?" Have you had these conversations? Have you talked to the teenagers among you who are verbalizing these concerns? These are the questions our culture is wrestling with. A reduced version of the gospel will have little to say to such questions. No wonder so many have determined that the church and "the gospel" have very little to contribute to the world.”
o So what is the gospel?
§ The gospel is “Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”
· You
o You may wonder, why does this matter? Does it make a difference if the gospel is the kingdom of God and not how one gets to heaven? Don’t we still end up in heaven if we believe in God? Yes.
o It matters for a few reasons:
§ What are we inviting people into?
§ If you are a follower of Jesus, what did you commit to? Did you commit to Jesus to get to heaven or to participate in bringing God’s kingdom to earth
· We
o This is a calling as a community to see the Bible in all it’s glory, pain and the story it embodies
o The Bible is a story of a community, wrestling with the kingdom of God, trying to figure out what that looks like, what it means to partner with God in restoration and reconciling all of creation
o If the gospel is “Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”
o Churches play a big part in that
· Let’s pray