Thew Gospel of the Kingdom | Sermon 04/07/2024

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April 8, 2024

Pastor Jeff Durbin is visiting Apologia Church Utah and preaches through the book of Romans on the Gospel of the Kingdom.

00:32: Good morning, well that's not working, is it? How about that? There you go. Good morning. Now?
00:38: No? How about there? No? There you go.
00:43: Okay. All right. Good morning. Praise the Lord. It's an honor to be here with you all. If you would open your Bibles to the
00:48: Gospel according to Matthew, Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 4.
00:55: Well known section. I mean, if you are new to the Bible and you started reading in the New Testament, you've been here almost immediately, because this is
01:03: Matthew's Gospel. It's the first Gospel that we have in order in the New Testament, and so even if you're not good at reading for a long period of time,
01:12: I'm sure you got to Chapter 4, and you know about the trial of the Lord Jesus in the wilderness.
01:18: And so I'm going to actually read a pretty significant section of it today as we talk about the
01:23: Gospel of the Kingdom. So this is the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 4, in verse 1.
01:30: Hear now the word of the living and the true God. Then Jesus was led up by the
01:36: Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.
01:43: And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
01:51: But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
01:59: Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the
02:05: Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
02:15: Jesus said to him again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
02:27: And he said to him, all these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.
02:33: Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the
02:40: Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
02:48: Now when he had heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee, and leaving
02:54: Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.
03:00: So that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the
03:09: Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region in shadow of death, on them a light is dawned.
03:21: From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
03:30: While walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
03:38: And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.
03:46: And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets.
03:54: And he called them. Immediately, they left the boat and their father and followed him.
04:00: And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
04:15: So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and that's the paralyzed.
04:26: And he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the
04:35: Jordan, thus far as the reading of God's holy word. Let's pray. God, we pray that you'd bless,
04:44: Lord, the proclamation of your word today, that you by your spirit would teach. Get, Lord, the teacher out of the way.
04:50: Lord, we pray that people would forget me in this service, in this message, that they'd remember you, that you'd glorify your name through the proclamation of your truth.
04:59: Help us to understand, God, the good news of the kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.
05:07: This is vitally important, and I think as we talk about the gospel of the kingdom, just how important this is.
05:15: You've heard probably the recent controversy over saying Christ is king and the controversy around, you know,
05:23: Christians saying Christ is king, is that anti -Semitic? Is it wrong for Christians to claim that Christ is king?
05:30: And I think the only reason you can have that as a controversy today in the West is that we haven't been saying it faithfully and consistently enough.
05:38: We haven't been living like it's actually true that Christ is king. I mean, just consider one of the most basic Christian confessions.
05:46: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. Or when we say that Jesus is king of kings and Lord of lords.
05:55: The apostle John in the book of Revelation says that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth.
06:01: I want you just to consider in terms of when that was written, even if you take a later dating of the book of Revelation and you place it under Domitian's reign somewhere around 96
06:10: AD. I completely disagree with that. Or you take a earlier dating of the book of Revelation that's pre -destruction of Jerusalem before the temple fell.
06:19: You have the apostle John saying in the context where it doesn't look like Jesus is king.
06:25: Right? Let's be honest. In the Roman Empire, they're killing Christians, lighting Christians on fire, throwing them to the lions, throwing them in ovens.
06:34: I mean, they're martyring Christians left and right. But if you're a Christian in the first century, you're essentially on the run in many respects.
06:40: It doesn't look like Jesus is the one with all authority in heaven and on earth visibly.
06:46: But that was the claim of Christ as Jesus ends here in the gospel according to Matthew.
06:53: Matthew 28, 18 through 20, he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
07:00: That's the claim of Jesus. That he has all authority in heaven and on earth. And the apostle
07:06: John in the book of Revelation calls Jesus the ruler of the kings of the earth. That is basic Christian confession.
07:13: Jesus is the king. He's the ruler of the world. Every king, every ruler, every
07:18: Lord, every everything has to yield to Christ in his glory and his authority. Amen? Amen?
07:26: You guys say amen and apology, don't you? Okay. Good. All right. There you go. But what's interesting here is that while it can be today in the
07:35: West so controversial to say, wait a second, Christians, are you saying that this entire nation has to come to faith in Jesus?
07:42: That that's your goal? Is that this whole nation from bottom to top acknowledges the Lordship of Christ and trusts in Jesus?
07:49: You really believe that that's going to happen? We'd say, yeah, we believe the Great Commission is not wishful thinking. It's what God's going to do in the world.
07:55: We believe that Jesus is actually king and that means something, that yes, rulers and everybody from mother and father to parents, children, everything from the bottom to the top, everybody has to acknowledge the rule of Jesus and come under his
08:11: Lordship. And it's interesting when you read the gospel according to Matthew and you get to this section of the trial of Jesus, you end this section seeing that a section of scripture is quoted from the
08:24: Old Testament as a fulfillment and it leads immediately into Jesus saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
08:33: And it says that Jesus, after all of this, is proclaiming something specific, the gospel of the kingdom.
08:42: Now stop there for a moment. Gospel according to Matthew, these are the words of God. Here is the incarnate one coming to live that life of faithfulness and obedience before Yahweh, the
08:54: Father, and Jesus now is the perfect Adam. He's doing what Israel failed to do in their wilderness trial.
09:01: He is appealing to the word of God, obeying the Father everywhere through all the trials. He is the true and perfect Israel.
09:08: He is the true Adam, what the image of God was supposed to be, and Jesus is fulfilling all this.
09:13: And of course, Matthew is portraying all this and then Jesus immediately starts proclaiming something that, let's be honest, the average
09:20: Christian today in the West has no way to articulate. They just have no concept. Like if you were to ask the average
09:26: Christian today, what is the gospel of the kingdom? Now typically if you ask
09:33: Christians today, right, you would say, what's the gospel? And people would have just sort of a very rudimentary sort of just bare bones basics and it's not wrong, it is part of the gospel, it's a part of the gospel.
09:45: They'll say, well, the good news is that Jesus died for sins and He rose again from the dead so that through faith in Him, you go to heaven one day.
09:52: And that's true, of course, as far as it goes, if you have faith in Jesus, He lived and died and rose again, we have eternal life, we have peace with God, we're reconciled to God, and yes, we are going to heaven one day.
10:06: And if you were to say to the average Christian, so that's the gospel, yeah, well that's how Paul articulates the gospel, here are the pieces of the gospel, here's who
10:13: Jesus is, this is what He did, and this is what it means to us, and so repent and believe.
10:18: And that's true. But if you say, well, what is the gospel of the kingdom? Why is that good news?
10:25: Because what's gospel mean? Good news, right? And in Scripture, what do we have? We have gospel, we have
10:32: God's gospel in Romans 1, we have the gospel of the kingdom, we have the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's described in a number of different ways, and we typically can get at the main parts, but if you say to the average
10:44: Christian today, what is the good news of the kingdom? Why is the rule of the
10:51: Messiah good news for the world? That His rule, His kingdom is good news.
11:00: Now what's interesting here is to consider the very Jewishness of the Christian faith. We share the same
11:07: Bible in terms of the Old Testament as Jews. We have the same books, same
11:12: Bible, we share exactly the same Bible. Roman Catholics have added works to the Old Testament, the apocryphal works that the
11:18: Jews always rejected, but we share the same Bible as the Jews. We are the true descendants of Abraham, amen, through faith, yes?
11:25: But Jews, and this is a very Jewish gospel before us, it is filled with references to the
11:32: Old Testament, whether they're direct references or it's allusions to Old Testament and symbolism, it's so entirely
11:39: Jewish, which is why this is so significant. The Jews were anticipating, because of the promises of God in the
11:47: Old Testament, a messianic figure that would do what Christians all say that Jesus did.
11:54: He would be the one that would be pierced through for our transgressions, Isaiah 53. The Lord would lay on him the iniquity of us all,
12:01: Isaiah 53. That he'd be counted guilty, though they thought he was dying for his own sins, he'd be dying for the sins of God's people, their transgressions.
12:12: They knew there was redemption. All the families of the earth will return to worship Yahweh, Psalm 22.
12:18: The promise of salvation is there, that the nations are going to be drawn to God, that there'd be redemption, there'd be peace, there'd be a payment for sin, the
12:26: Messiah would be cut off. He'd die a violent death for the sins of God's people. Listen, the Jewish people knew that this messianic figure would bring peace between God and man.
12:37: They knew that, but that's not all they knew. The Jewish people who had the same
12:43: Bible as us would see Jesus coming in saying the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is at hand, and they'd say, here we are.
12:52: This is happening now. God promised to do something in the world that was beyond simply my own private romance with Jesus, which is what much of modern evangelicalism has done with the gospel.
13:09: They've turned it into just personal, right? It's just between me and Jesus. It's just about my intimate relationship with Jesus, and there's nothing wrong with that so far as it goes.
13:19: It's true. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
13:26: Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5 .1. That's true, but the Jewish people reading this gospel would be astonished.
13:34: They'd say, it's happening. This really happened. The Messiah has come. The kingdom of God is now in the world.
13:41: It's going to grow in the world, and this Messiah is going to rule. As the Bible said, they would have understood that the
13:47: Messiah ruling on David's throne, which the New Testament authors explicitly state that Jesus is on that throne now at the right hand of the
13:57: Father, that that's good news for the world, not just me personally.
14:03: That Christ ruling and reigning on his throne is good news for the world.
14:09: It's not just about my own relationship with Jesus. It's what God is doing to glorify himself through the redemption that he's bringing into the world that goes far beyond my own salvation.
14:21: And so my question to you is this. When you see in Matthew's gospel this terminology being used that Jesus is proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, do you know what it means?
14:37: Do you know why it's such good news? It goes beyond your own private relationship with Jesus.
14:44: You see, Matthew begins this, and he's quoting scripture. He's quoting from Isaiah. He's going to the law, word of God, to the prophets, and he's saying, see, here's the fulfillment.
14:53: Jesus is exactly what was promised. But do we know what was promised? You say, well, let me challenge you with it in this way.
15:00: Oftentimes, today, as Christians, we have really bad eschatologies around us.
15:07: Eschatology is the study of last things. We're talking about what's going to happen next.
15:12: And boy, are we in it right now, right? Isn't it crazy? You guys seen TikTok lately? You shouldn't be on TikTok.
15:18: Okay. Have you seen the crazy stuff lately? Like the lunar eclipse, and you got a bunch of lunatics, like, traveling in airplanes.
15:26: We're going to go watch the end of the world, and we're going to Rapture, Texas, where it's going to take us. Like, you guys are absolute buffoons.
15:33: We do this, like, every six months, Jesus is coming back, because there's this weird thing happening in the sky, and we've got an eclipse that happens, you know, only about every other year sort of a thing.
15:44: But this one's the one. It's the end of the world, and you've got blood moons, and John Hagee, and you've got Y2K. I've lived through all this stuff.
15:51: Every six months, Jesus is coming back, and the world's going to end. Eschatology gets freaky in the
15:57: West. And you've got people making prophecies today. I've seen so many TikTok videos in the last week, people saying, the
16:03: Lord spoke to me. The Lord spoke to me, and He wanted me to deliver you this very important message, that the lunar eclipse is the end of all things, and that Jesus is returning, and we've got
16:12: Rapture, and all these different things. Bad eschatologies, bad Christian eschatologies. Some of them weren't even in the mind of Christians about 200 years ago.
16:22: Some of them are brand -new inventions. They're novel, novel beliefs in the whole history of the Christian church, but we've got bad eschatology that the
16:31: Jews today will seize upon. And they'll say, oh, so you're saying that Jesus is the
16:39: Jewish Messiah? And you're like, well, yes, I can show you how, and the prophecies, and when
16:44: He's coming, and that He's going to die, and die for the sins of God's people, and His identity is
16:49: God Himself, and He's coming. And you can go in there, and they'll go, okay, yeah, all that's well and good, but you're saying
16:54: He's the Jewish Messiah. Well, yes, He's the Jewish Messiah. Okay, so what about all the justice, and the righteousness, and all these things that are supposed to come as part of the
17:08: Messiah's kingdom? What about His, you're saying He's not ruling, really ruling today in the world, and it's going to come some other time, some other coming,
17:15: He's going to come and actually bring His kingdom. And Christians today will say, yeah, well, you know, He's kind of reigning now, but not really, and then someday
17:22: He's going to come and reign, and He's going to fulfill all those prophecies about justice and righteousness on the earth, and all those things, and the Jewish people will say, and they're right for saying it, oh, then
17:29: He's not the Messiah. Because the promises of the Messiah in the Old Testament, they don't give to us this split coming of Jesus, and like,
17:38: He'll do some of this stuff, but maybe not even really do some of that stuff, and just sort of spiritualize, no, all the promises are that there's a real rule of the
17:46: Messiah in the world, yes, He brings salvation, but it comes with some important aspects of justice and righteousness, and the blessing and light of God's law.
17:57: And so, as Christians, we need to understand how Jesus actually fulfills all those things, and is actually doing those things now.
18:05: Jesus refers to the kingdom of God as a mustard seed that becomes a tree, and it grows even taller than a man.
18:14: The birds of the air will nest in its branches. He talks about the rule of God like leaven in a lump of dough.
18:20: It grows, and some of you guys, women in here, you guys, I'm sure, make bread, you know exactly what we're talking about. When you guys are doing your starters, and all the things that you're doing, when you're doing this thing to make this bread grow and be delicious and amazing, you know that when you're making it in the kitchen, you don't hear a bunch of hammer sounds, and drilling, and clanking, and working, it just grows slowly, and quietly even, and it permeates the entire area of the loaf.
18:47: That's how Jesus talks about his rule. It's small to large growth, and by the way, that's precisely how the
18:52: Old Testament said the Messiah's kingdom would come. In Daniel, you have a number of instances in Daniel where he gives specific prophecy about Jesus, even down to exactly when
19:04: Jesus is coming, and the fact that he would die, and he would die before the second temple's destruction.
19:10: That happened in 70 AD, so specific that he would make atonement for iniquity, that he'd bring an everlasting righteousness, but it also gives you specific prophecy about the future of the world from Daniel's day.
19:23: He talks about four earthly kingdoms. He talks about it from Babylon, and you move through history, and it lands on Rome, and how in that time,
19:32: God would bring this kingdom that would never be destroyed, and it'd be like a stone cut out of a mountain, a little rock basically, and then it would become a huge mountain that filled the entire earth, small to large growth.
19:46: That's how the kingdom grows, but brothers and sisters, do you know, do you know, can you explain, can you defend what the good news of the kingdom is, what
19:58: God said he was going to do, and by the way, I'm going to just give you, I'll just give you the most important point I want you to get now as I go to the text.
20:05: Here's the most important point I wanted to give to you as one of the fellow elders and pastors of what
20:10: God is doing here. I want to encourage you with the good news of the kingdom that God is going to have victory in the world he promised it, and so your labor is not in vain.
20:23: No matter how small you think you are, no matter how insignificant you think you are, no matter how small you think the work is,
20:31: God has promised the Messiah will rule the nations and draw all the nations up to God's mountain, that he would have victory over the world, that the
20:42: Messiah would put all of God's enemies under his feet as a footstool for his feet. You see, the story of the gospel of the kingdom is total victory over the world, and if you are a believer in Jesus Christ today, you are one of the ones he has already had victory over, and he is going to extend that victory to the ends of the earth.
21:04: And so, we can't do a comprehensive look at the promises of the kingdom from the
21:09: Old Testament, but I'll give you some that you need to bury into your hearts and minds to give you hope for today, hope for the future, hope in your labors as a church, hope in your proclamation of the gospel and God's truth.
21:23: Just consider, when the Bible opens up, it gives you the story at the opening that humanity makes a wreck of things at the very beginning,
21:31: God makes a promise after that wreck of things, he promises that he is going to send the woman's seed, there's some portrayals there of the virgin birth, the woman's seed, who will crush the head of the serpent, so there's one who's coming that's going to destroy all the work of the devil, he's going to destroy this work, we went from a garden with God walking with us, and now we're separated from God, out of the garden into the wilderness, and so all of this fall, all of this curse, all of this brokenness, and God says he is sending someone to crush the head of the serpent.
22:08: God's going to fix this. He's going to cover the sins of God's people, all that's there, but as the story moves in the book of Genesis, you get to the story of Abraham, and what's the story of Abraham?
22:21: Abraham is told by God that he is going to have descendants as numerous as the stars, as numerous as the stars.
22:30: There's a lot of stars, a lot. If you consider the common belief of the modern day evangelical, it's that, well, we're just going to lose in history, right?
22:44: I mean, people are so excited now for the eclipse because all they can think about is, I get to leave all my underwear and shoes behind and get taken away into heaven and leave this whole hell behind me and everyone else is left behind.
22:57: The average Christian today in the West thinks with that mindset, I can't wait to leave this world to get to that better world, that real spiritual life out there somewhere.
23:09: This is all just tainted sinful stuff. I've got to get out there somewhere, and you know, the truth is, is that Jesus is a powerful
23:16: Savior, but most of humanity is lost. We're the minority in history.
23:23: God's people are the minority. And you go to Genesis and you realize, oh, wait a second, that doesn't make any sense with the story.
23:30: Abraham's descendants are going to be as numerous as the what? As the stars.
23:38: That's this incalculable, there are so many stars, it's supposed to blind you with the light of it.
23:45: And then it goes even further. God makes another promise to Abraham. He says, you're going to have descendants and it'll be like the sand on the seashore.
23:54: Try counting that. Try counting that. It'll be frustrating, won't it?
24:00: Super frustrating. Because there's no way to do it. And so the scripture says one of the promises of what
24:06: God is going to do through the Messiah, through Abraham's seed, is that he would actually have descendants as numerous as the stars and like the sand.
24:13: This is going to be an incalculable number. It's going to be overwhelming what God does in the
24:18: Messiah's kingdom. But then Genesis moves a little more. It has another hint of here's what's to come in Genesis 49 .10.
24:27: It says that one is coming, and to him, listen to this. Mark it down.
24:34: Shall be the obedience of the nations. To the one who's coming, he shall have the obedience of the peoples, of the nations.
24:43: That's what he's coming to get. Descendants as numerous as the stars and the obedience of the nations.
24:49: Do you see why the Jews think the way that they do about Mashiach, about the Messiah? That the nations have to come to God and he will rule over the nations.
24:58: Now, let's do a little hint for a second here. Look around the room for a moment and just consider, first of all, where you're at.
25:07: You are in Utah, on the other side of the planet from Israel, on the other side of the planet from where Jesus did his earthly ministry.
25:17: And here we are now, about 2 ,000 years later in Utah, worshiping and loving the
25:24: Lord God of Israel. How many of you guys are Jewish by ethnicity?
25:32: Anybody? Anybody? Raise your hand. Don't be ashamed. He's like, we're all mutts in a way, right?
25:38: But just a little bit. I get a little Jewish. Shalom. Okay. Just a little bit. But I want you to notice what
25:45: I just said. It says the Messiah is going to have descendants as numerous as the stars through that seed, and he will have the obedience of the nations.
25:52: And I just asked you in Utah, about 2 ,000 years later, how many of you guys are Jewish by birth or ethnicity?
25:58: And we've got, well, maybe a little. I got about 10%, right? Whatever it might be. But here we are now, all basically the descendants of pagans in history, worshiping and loving the
26:09: Lord God of Israel, confessing Yahweh as our God, obedient to the law word of God, pursuing the
26:15: God of Israel because of Jesus. To him shall be the obedience of the peoples, the obedience of the nations.
26:21: That was the promise. But then the promise gets deeper and it grows more and more and more through God's Old Testament scriptures.
26:28: One example, go to your Bibles. You know this passage. And I want you to make note of something about this section of scripture that you may not have noticed before.
26:42: You know this part. Everybody knows this part. It's in all the Christmas cards, right? It's one of my favorite verses.
26:48: So I bring it up a lot because it says a lot about Jesus and what he's going to do in the world. In Isaiah 9, 6, it says this, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given.
27:01: All right. So what is that? That's a human being, right? This is someone that's one of us, a son and a child.
27:09: We've got that going on in this room right now. Okay. This is, this is a person that's human. It's human. All right.
27:15: And it says this, and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor.
27:22: Wait, wait a second. That's a specific name of Yahweh. That's a title of Yahweh in the
27:27: Old Testament. What are we doing? Here's a monotheistic Jew who believes there's only one God writing about 700 years before the earthly ministry of Jesus.
27:36: And he says that a son is coming, a child is coming, and he's using now titles that are specific to Yahweh, Wonderful Counselor.
27:45: But it gets worse. Then it says, El Gibor, the mighty
27:51: God. One chapter later, Yahweh is called the mighty
27:57: God, El Gibor. This doesn't make any sense. What are you saying, Isaiah? You're a
28:02: Jew. You believe there's only one God. You just said a son and a child, and now you're calling him Yahweh.
28:08: You're saying it's God himself coming as a son, coming as a child? But then it goes on.
28:14: It says, Everlasting Father. That means the father of eternity, the eternal one. It says,
28:22: Prince of Peace. Listen, remember we talked about progress?
28:27: Remember we talked about it? Mustard seed to tree, leaven, lump of dough, right?
28:33: It grows like a stone that becomes a mountain. It says this about the Messiah's kingdom, ready?
28:39: Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end.
28:49: Just consider that. The promise of Messiah is, listen, it's not coming into the world, as my friend says, like the 82nd airborne dropping out of the sky and obliterating everything.
28:58: What is the promise of Messiah's kingdom? Is it starts slow, small, and then it increases and grows and grows and grows.
29:07: But what is he called? He's called the Prince of Peace. How is he the Prince of Peace? Because he brings peace between God and men, between God and women.
29:16: He reconciles people to himself through his cross. He's the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government, that is what he rules over, and of peace, there will be no end.
29:28: Here it is, on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it. Listen closely, gospel of the kingdom stuff here.
29:38: It says, with justice and with righteousness, from this time forth and forever more, the zeal of the
29:46: Lord of hosts will do this. When you get frustrated and discouraged, as sometimes we all do, and I do, over the state of the world and the brokenness you see around you, even in your own life or around you in the world and your community, and you think about the promises of God and his kingdom, you remember this.
30:05: It's not you that's going to accomplish this. How is this all going to happen? The zeal of the
30:11: Lord of hosts will accomplish this. It is God that is going to fulfill this.
30:16: It is God who is going to oversee it. It is God who is ultimately going to do it. But here is what I want to make note of.
30:22: You know that verse. Have you all heard that verse before? Yes? You've received a Christmas card before, right? That's always on the
30:28: Christmas card, right? Because it's amazing. There's the incarnation, a son, a child. It's God himself, and he's come. It's his kingdom, and it's going to grow, and he's the
30:34: Prince of Peace. We love that verse. 700 years before Jesus comes, it's saying that God is coming as a man.
30:43: That's pretty specific in terms of the identity of the Messiah, because how many gods are there? There's one God. So to be the
30:49: Jewish Messiah, it's very specific. It's the true
30:54: God that's coming as a man. But did you notice that Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, that famous verse that we all know, is in the section of Scripture that Matthew was just quoting from in Matthew chapter 4.
31:13: You might be thinking, well, why is that significant? Well, Matthew thought it was quite important to make note of the fact that this incarnate one,
31:21: God as man, came in and did what Israel failed to do in the wilderness. So he's the true and perfect Israel.
31:28: He does what they should have done. He obeys the Father at every trial. He appeals to the Word of God at every trial.
31:35: He resists the devil and the devil's lies, which is what Adam should have done and Eve should have done.
31:41: He's the perfect Adam, the perfect Israel. And then as he comes out of the wilderness in victory, the quotation is from Isaiah 9.
31:52: And what does Isaiah 9 talk about? Light has come. Light has dawned.
31:58: The ruler of the world, that prince of peace, is here now. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.
32:05: Matthew sees the story in a much different way than most modern evangelicals in terms of like, you know,
32:11: Jesus is a friend of mine. You know, it's just sort of like my buddy, the thing I put me is, he's like, you know, between my ears and like in my family, in my home, it's like a personal romance.
32:21: We just want to start Bible studies in basements sort of a thing. We're satisfied with that. You know, you guys are in charge over there, but Jesus is in charge of heaven.
32:29: You know, he's Lord over my own life personally, but you know, he doesn't necessarily have anything to say to you. Matthew doesn't see it that way.
32:36: Matthew sees Jesus as the ruler of the world broken into history. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Turn because the rule of God has broken into this world.
32:46: Heaven has now come into the world to invade the world. That's what's taking place in the incarnation.
32:53: And so Jesus goes to a Jewish audience and he says, guess what? The good news of the kingdom is here.
33:00: He's proclaiming the kingdom of God has arrived. The rule of God has arrived in history, and that's good news for the world.
33:09: Listen, it's a good news for the world that this world will be filled with light and peace, that it will be filled with justice and with righteousness forevermore.
33:22: Is that good news for the world? There's a lot of hell in this world, a lot of brokenness, a lot of pain, a lot of injustice, and human beings are just sort of like clamoring.
33:34: What do we do? How do we fix this injustice? How do we do this? How do we do that? How do we solve these problems? And people just looking inwards at themselves and trying to just figure out some solution.
33:44: And Jesus comes into the world with a perfect law, with a perfect standard of justice, with his law word and with righteousness.
33:52: And he promises that through the salvation of the nations, then the law of God comes from the people of God and brings justice and righteousness in the world.
34:01: Jesus is coming to reverse the curse as far as it is found. That was what they were expecting the
34:07: Messiah to do. And so I'm going to give you more in terms of why is this good news for the world? That's Isaiah chapter nine.
34:15: If you would turn to Isaiah 42, another precious promise about the Messiah's kingdom.
34:21: In Isaiah chapter 42, a promise of the Messiah. Again, this is written about 700 years before the time of Jesus.
34:28: The text says, behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.
34:34: I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.
34:43: He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the streets.
34:48: A bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice.
34:57: That's good news for the world. That's why the kingdom is gospel. The kingdom is good news.
35:05: Listen, he will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law.
35:22: Stop and think about how beautiful and how precious that promise is. These are the words of God. God's gonna do this.
35:30: This is what Jesus is about in his gospel of the kingdom. Did you notice, again, again, progress.
35:41: There is something here that is a process. He will not grow faint or discouraged until he has established justice in the earth.
35:54: This is a process in history, but you see that the promise of the Messiah's kingdom is that there's going to be descendants as numerous as the stars.
36:03: This Messiah is going to have the obedience of the peoples, the obedience of the nations. He is going to have an increase to his rule, his government, and of peace.
36:12: He's going to rule on David's throne. He's going to bring righteousness and justice forevermore.
36:18: And here you have Messiah is coming as this gentle, gentle ruler.
36:25: I mean, Jesus and his earthly ministry upset a lot of Jewish sensitivities because they have, you have to give them some grace, this very complex portrait of the
36:34: Messiah given to them in the Old Testament. They've got a suffering servant. They've got one who dies for sins.
36:41: They've got one who is rejected by men. They've also got one who's gonna rule the world, draw the nations, establish justice and righteousness.
36:50: The portrait that the Scriptures give to us of the Messiah is so complex and amazing, but the
36:56: Jewish people in Jesus' day would seize upon the fact that, wait a second, Jesus. Just wait. Please wait.
37:01: Explain this to me. You are from Nazareth, this nothing little place
37:08: Nazareth. Can any good thing come from Nazareth? I mean, I don't know what it's like here in Utah.
37:14: I'm not like totally into like, you know, geographical stuff and everything, but I guess they'd be like saying like Messiah came from Ogden or something.
37:22: I don't know. Is that a thing? Right? Like, who's there? Like, whatever.
37:28: Like, I don't know. Did I do it right? Okay, all right. But it throws them a little bit.
37:35: It throws them a bit because they're like, how can the ruler of the world look like you?
37:41: Jesus, you don't have any money, right? Like you're having to feed people with these massive miracles of fish and loaves and you're doing all this stuff.
37:50: There's not enough money in your money bag and you're going to rule the world? I mean, even like some like political people who like fail, like they try to run for a political office and they fail miserably.
38:02: They'll raise like 65 million dollars. They still got money in the bank and they still fail as politicians.
38:09: You're saying you're gonna rule the world as king of the world and you've got like a money bag that one of your followers is actually stealing from?
38:15: You don't even have the money to feed your followers. And yeah, you're the Messiah. You're the ruler of the world.
38:21: I mean, I thought flowing robes and royal colors and a huge entourage and maybe even like a private military would be what we'd see first with Messiah.
38:31: And Jesus comes in and he throws them because he comes as a suffering servant to come and die for the sins of his people.
38:36: And they just couldn't put it together. They don't understand. But what they did understand is this Messiah is going to bring forth justice to the nations.
38:45: If Jesus doesn't do this, Jesus isn't the Messiah. Do you hear that?
38:53: If Jesus doesn't do this, Jesus isn't the Messiah. But Jesus does do it and he is doing it.
39:01: Think about what it says there. It says, he will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law.
39:13: How does Christ establishing justice look in this world? Just consider your life as a believer.
39:19: You personally, your life as a believer. I know some of you. I saw you at your worst.
39:27: I have. I know people in this church and your trials and where God has brought you and it is amazing.
39:34: It's amazing. I've been in rooms for hours with certain people that are in this room and I've seen them at their lowest, the most broken, total darkness apart from God.
39:50: And now I see what God has done through your life and sanctification where you've gone from darkness and brokenness and rebellion to redeemed and loving
39:58: Jesus and loving God's law and loving his standards and having his law go forth from your own mouth, proclaiming his goodness, his glory, his excellencies.
40:10: Your life has been transformed by the Prince of Peace and now what do you proclaim? You proclaim his gospel and the goodness of his word and law.
40:19: You see, that's how that kingdom grows with justice and righteousness forevermore. Jesus rules on that throne.
40:25: He saves people. God indwells them and they love his light and his law and that spreads into the world.
40:33: Light penetrates darkness. Jesus is on his throne and he is establishing justice and righteousness in the world.
40:40: Just consider how he's transformed your life and he continues to transform your life.
40:46: Just think about it. Think about the blessings in the world today that have come not from atheism, not from agnosticism, the blessings that the world has experienced in terms of light and goodness and justice and righteousness that have come as gospel benefits to the world.
41:05: The standards we even have today in the West, admittedly some of them hanging on by a thread because of the abandonment of Christianity and God's law.
41:14: The blessings we have in the world today of standards of justice, standards of righteousness, equality under the law, those principles come from the law word of God.
41:24: They come from the Scriptures. I often point it out because I think it's something you need to know.
41:29: If you look into history, say of just this nation. We're not the most important thing in the world. We're not the most important thing in history.
41:35: Get that out of our heads, right? Jesus' kingdom is. But you think about the blessings of just this nation, the goodness that we have in our laws of demanding evidence when there's accusations coming, demanding that there's cross -examination of witnesses in court, demanding that we have standards that protect personal property, demanding that we have freedom to speak freely in God's name.
41:59: These are blessings from the Christian church and the law word of God. They don't come from atheism. They came from the
42:05: Christian church. Those standards of justice and righteousness in the world, they come from God's law.
42:11: The world transforms progressively as a process under the light of the
42:17: Lordship of Jesus Christ. But I wanted to give you those promises as things to sit on and to meditate on and to trust in as a church as God uses you as his people to proclaim his gospel into the world.
42:30: It's good news not just for you personally. It's good news for the world. It's good news of a kingdom. The fact that Jesus is
42:36: King is good news for the world. So today when we have people resisting, what you're saying
42:42: Christ is King, yeah, that's the good news of his kingdom. Christ is King is in essence a way of proclaiming his kingdom is good news.
42:50: We should be saying it all the time. Christ is King. His kingdom has arrived. It is growing.
42:57: He is on his throne. He is ruling over the world. He's the Prince of Peace. It is good news of his rule.
43:04: But of course the world is offended by the message that Jesus is King if they are at war with him.
43:11: If Christ is someone you're in rebellion against, the proclamation of his rule in the world is something that will rub you the wrong way and cause you to lash out.
43:21: But I wanted to end today with this. I just gave you just a smattering of verses and moved through a few bits of the story of the
43:30: Gospel of Matthew talking about the good news of his kingdom, the fulfillment of prophecy,
43:36: Jesus is the Messiah, this is good news of a kingdom. But I wanted to demonstrate to you something else. There is a consistent message that we are missing and it's assumed and taught consistently through the
43:49: New Testament. They knew what the story was. We don't seem to know what it is and maybe that's why we're impotent as a church today.
43:57: Matthew starts by saying, look, Jesus is the King. You know that genealogy part of Matthew?
44:03: You're like, let me just skip that. Don't skip that. That's the record of God's faithfulness, that he kept his promise.
44:09: That's why Matthew put it there, to show you that Jesus actually has the royal right to the throne. So he starts with that.
44:15: Then he starts showing you that Jesus is the true and perfect Israel. Jesus fulfills this. Jesus fulfills that. Jesus goes into the wilderness, true and perfect Israel.
44:22: He conquers Satan. He does all this. He's proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom. He came for the nations. Isaiah 9, it's coming.
44:29: The world's coming under the feet of Jesus. Jesus is going to rule the world. Matthew understands that.
44:35: And then Matthew ends the Gospel after the victory of Jesus over death and sin and resurrection. Matthew ends the
44:40: Gospel with, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
44:49: Go therefore make disciples of all the nations. There it is. He came to get the nations.
44:56: Right? He talks about baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.
45:03: And lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. That's how Matthew ends the Gospel. It seems like Matthew understands the
45:09: Gospel of the kingdom. It seems like Matthew understands why Jesus came. He came for the nations. He came for the world. He came to win everything.
45:16: And what's interesting here is that you see throughout the Gospels and the letters, you see that that's exactly what they understood as the consistent message.
45:22: I want to show it to you real fast, just quickly. Last thing to land on, to meditate on as a church. Go to Romans chapter 1.
45:29: Romans chapter 1. Now, I hope if you're new in Christ, I hope you are just burying yourself in the
45:40: Scriptures, but also specifically getting yourself all the way into the book of Romans. If you want to understand the
45:47: Gospel, go to the inspired Apostle's systematic explanation of it, where he explains from the very beginning all the way through, this is the
45:59: Gospel. This is what God does. So never get far from Romans. But the
46:05: Apostle Paul in Romans 1 starts off a particular way. He says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
46:19: Another way of talking about it, the good news of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the
46:25: Holy Scriptures concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the
46:32: Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our
46:37: Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship, here it is, to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.
46:51: Did you catch it? What is Paul doing here? He's doing precisely the same thing that Matthew is doing in his gospel.
47:02: Exactly the same thing. He's putting his finger on the same points. Did you notice it?
47:09: What is he doing that Matthew did as well? Well, Matthew highlights the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy.
47:14: Matthew's quoting Scripture to say Jesus fulfills this prophecy. Jesus fulfills this prophecy. Jesus is the expected
47:20: Messiah. Jesus is doing this because God said this here. Matthew did exactly that. And Paul says here, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the
47:31: Holy Scriptures. But then Matthew's point is that this gospel of the kingdom is coming.
47:37: It's arrived. And he finishes with, now go get the nations. They belong to God. Jesus has all authority.
47:43: He's the king of the earth. And Paul is saying in the opening of his explanation of the gospel,
47:50: God promised this through the prophets. Jesus is here. Here's what he's done. And he says, here's the point, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.
48:05: Brothers and sisters, are you ready for this? The goal of the gospel was not simply to save you. You're part of it.
48:13: The goal of the gospel of God was to bring salvation to the ends of the earth. That the knowledge of God would cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.
48:23: How wet is the Pacific Ocean? That's a stupid question, isn't it?
48:28: You're like, that's what? It's all wet. So the knowledge of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.
48:39: It's all getting wet. Psalm 72, he shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.
48:47: He shall have dominion. And the Apostle Paul here just does what Matthew does. He says he fulfilled all the scriptures.
48:53: This is who Jesus is. And here's the goal of the obedience of the nations for the sake of his name. But that's not it, though.
48:59: Watch. That's how Paul opens this letter. He says in Romans 1, hi, how you doing? I'm Paul, slave of Jesus.
49:05: Nice to meet you. Can't wait to see you. And then he says, here's what God has done, promised, and this is the goal of the gospel, the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.
49:15: But he doesn't do, he doesn't just stop there. As he explains the entire gospel, go to Romans chapter 16, he ends his gospel, explanation of the gospel.
49:26: People have oftentimes, by the way, if you didn't know this, they've referred to the book of Romans as the gospel according to Paul. He ends this explanation of the gospel like Matthew ends his gospel.
49:43: He says, verse 25, now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that has been kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all the nations according to the command of the eternal
50:07: God to bring about the obedience of faith. Where? Among all the nations.
50:13: For what? For the sake of his name. So brothers and sisters, as your fellow brother and worker, child of God, I'm gonna leave you as a church with this.
50:28: It's good news of a kingdom, and you've been saved in Jesus Christ. You've been brought to peace.
50:33: You know God. You have the gift of eternal life. Yes, you're gonna spend eternity with God. It's a gift of his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.
50:41: But this gospel of a kingdom is not just personal. It's expansive. It's global.
50:47: It's the world. And God uses his people to bring about that growth of the kingdom and growth and prosperity of the gospel itself.
50:59: Meaning this, I'm sure at times you look around you in Utah and it can seem maybe even overwhelming, right?
51:08: Like you think about, and it's one of the reasons we planted a church in Utah, you think about the numbers in Utah of genuine professing
51:15: Christians in the state. This is like a place that like needs a lot of church plants and a lot of work.
51:20: This is like an un -gospeled area in many senses, right? You look at a place like Utah where you have a lot of false religion and false
51:28: Christ and false Gospels and you've got, it might, it seems like so much darkness at times, right?
51:34: Spiritual darkness around you. You've got like very committed atheism and secularism all around you and then also different versions of Mormonism and you've got a lot of hostility towards the true
51:46: Christian faith. You might feel at times overwhelmed and you look at a room like this and you say, how are we gonna win all of this to Jesus?
51:53: And my answer to you is this, it's the gospel of the kingdom. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this and he does it through his people.
52:02: And isn't it interesting when you think about like this feels really dark around me at times. It feels really spiritually dark and it's like, yeah, scripture talks about it like that and in, sorry, in Isaiah 9 that's quoted in Matthew 4, it talks about exactly that darkness and it says, but a light has dawned.
52:19: Light has come into the world through the Prince of Peace. He's come to rule the nations and the zeal of the
52:24: Lord of hosts will accomplish it. And so I leave you with this charge. Believe the good news of the kingdom.
52:32: Trust it. Trust his word. This is what he's doing in the world and he will have victory.
52:41: And he uses you, the church, the bride of Christ, as the help meat of Jesus.
52:48: As the help meat of Jesus to serve the King of Kings, to bring about that obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name.
52:59: And if you look at your own life, brothers and sisters, you say, I don't know how God could do it through me and there's a lot of people that are really lost out there.
53:06: I don't know if this, can this really be done? Can he really win all of Utah to Christ? Can it be a place that is under the feet of Jesus and glorifying
53:13: Christ and the true gospel? Is that really possible? I mean, there's some hard sinners out there. I would say, look at your own feet and see what
53:22: God has done in you. Because you, if you know Jesus, you were the hostile one.
53:28: You were the rebel. You were the enemy of God. And the only reason you trust in Jesus now is because an act of divine grace and mercy and power in your life.
53:38: It's God who raises the dead. But he uses his church to proclaim the gospel to do it.
53:46: And so my challenge to you is this, believe the gospel of the kingdom, believe those promises, and then lay your lives down for the sake of the lost around you.
53:57: Never see yourself, brothers and sisters, as so insignificant or incompetent. God could never really use me.
54:03: God speaks out of the mouths of asses. Calm down.
54:11: I used a biblical word. If you don't know the story, you better learn your Bibles.
54:19: That's what he does. He does. He uses people that seem kind of worthless, kind of insignificant, at times even unable to speak, kind of dumb, right?
54:31: Culturally speaking, can't really speak, and not professional orators. He uses people at times that the world would just say is a throwaway.
54:40: How's this person gonna change the world? How's this person gonna be used by God to change the world? That's what God does.
54:45: He loves to glorify himself through using people who are just generally seen as unworthy people.
54:53: And you know why you have hope? Because you have a gospel of a kingdom. Because you have king on a throne who says that he will not grow faint or weary until he has established justice in the earth.
55:04: So brothers and sisters, go preach the gospel. Do it with boldness. Lay your lives down.
55:10: Live lives of risky missionary sacrifice for the sake of the lost. Give yourself away.
55:17: Trust in God. Believe his promises. He keeps his promises. We often don't.
55:23: We fail. He doesn't. These promises are a sure word. Believe them and go preach the gospel.
55:28: Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for your word. Thank you, Lord, for your gospel.
55:35: We thank you for the promises of the kingdom. We pray God you would use apology of church and the work of every brother and sister here for the furtherance of your kingdom and your glory in Jesus' name.