“The Mystery of the Kingdom,” by Dr. Gordon Fee, Lesson 2b

The Crucified Messiah and the Stumbling Block of the Cross

I mean, why didn't he act just a little bit more like a God? The world is this Jesus doing who goes around and everything he does is all wrong and everything is in weakness. I mean who's gonna get anybody to follow him by his being crucified.

A Crucified Messiah, can you imagine such a thing?

It's unthinkable.

Besides all that when your Bible says cursed by God is everybody that hangs on a tree. You've got double indemnity. I mean not only is it stupid but the Bible's against it. God himself is against it. I mean, you've got trouble in your hands trying to preach a crucified Messiah in that world.

Greeks Jews want signs.

Greeks want wisdom and we preach a crucified Messiah and it's a Stumbling block to those seeking signs and it's foolishness to those asking for wisdom. But for those who are being saved it is Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

You say boy, how can that work out? Well, the answer lies way back there. I remember they can't handle Jesus. Even after he's disclosed that this is what's gonna happen to him. He's gonna be a suffering Messiah.

Remember that he does that you know what they do. They go along wrong they're going down the road asking What. Who's the greatest in the kingdom? And what answer does he give them? Huh? What answer does he give to who's the greatest in the kingdom?

Now not in this case the child a little child. I mean children didn't have status in that culture. Jesus says oh you want to know what the greatest in the kingdom is see this child.

Except you become like that.

To people who are asking who's the greatest. That's got to be the low blow and then they still don't get it. I mean right after that he tries him again. You know, he says I'm going to Jerusalem to die.

He does that three times. After the third time, you know what they do along the road two brothers come and say when you come in your kingdom, I want to sit in one place of authority and My other brother would like the other place of authority.

But don't laugh at them. That's exactly where you and I are. We're forever thinking Jesus did it all wrong and are trying to transform him to something different. That looks a little bit more like our own images and his answer to that particular question is look.

That's the way the pagans are. Their chief people lord it over them. But it shall not be so among you. He who would be the leader of all must be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto.

But to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That's pretty tough stuff. Now that is the first part of the mystery of the kingdom. This is why Jesus says such interesting things in his parables.

The kingdom of God is like The smallest of all the seeds it doesn't look like it's got a ghost of a chance. But when it finally comes to consummation, it is a herb so big That the birds of the air can find a place to nest in its branches.

The kingdom of God is like leaven. It doesn't amount to zilch. I mean, it's nothing. But somehow when it's placed in that The whole thing is finally penetrated by that. It's like seed growing secretly.

It's it's like the kind of thing we're not looking for we're not expecting anything out of this. Jesus is saying the kingdom of God doesn't come the way we are looking. That's why then back to that text in Luke 17.

Don't the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. It's not going to come with those powerful displays that they're looking for. It's going to come the way it has already made its entrance.

Namely in the coming of Jesus who is himself the entrance and the beginning of the kingdom of God. Okay. So one part of the kingdom is what I call the nature of the Messiah ship the nature of. What kind of Messiah they're getting on their hands?

The other side which is the other side of the same coin of the secret of the kingdom is that the Dramatic Inbreaking of the rule of God that they were looking for had in fact begun with Jesus of Nazareth.

The Kingdom of God as Already and Not Yet

That's the thing that is that the kingdom was in fact already on the scene. And it was on the scene in Jesus. The point I'm trying to stress now is that in Jesus it has already made the scene. Now that's the thing that we want to just establish for a few minutes and for it for a little bit in the next few minutes.

You remember that they're looking for this dramatic ending of history. What they get is Jesus and instead of being anything like a dramatic conclusion to history. They have a servant Messiah. Whom even those who recognize him as Messiah cannot penetrate to understand what he's doing.

And Jesus says the kingdom is already here. It's already present and they couldn't believe it. Now the question that we raised a bit ago and we're going to go back to answer is how can something be both present and future at the same time and.

The answer to that you understand lies in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It lies in the person of the king. I can put it in the simplest kinds of terms. I always wince a little bit when I when I'm saying this because my scholarly instincts want to say it differently, but it's alright.

It's still basically true. Where the king is there the kingdom is? Where the king is exercising his sovereign authority God's kingdom is present. That's exactly the point. The kingdom you see is not a place that we're going to it's a time that God ushers in.

But rather than being the dramatic conclusion to history They were looking for it turns out to be like mustard seed being planted in the ground. It turns out to be like Jesus, but it turns out that in Jesus God's rule is in fact already present and taking place.

Now.

What?

Scholars have learned to do in terms of this is to use language here, and this is the language I'm going to spend the rest of this evening on because it's so important to the entire New Testament. Including some things we said in this morning's class that several of you Suggested afterwards that you wish we'd say just a little bit more about this wealth and health this prosperity doctrine especially.

The key to understanding the entire New Testament everything in the New Testament is to find the proper framework into which to fit everything and That framework is the fact that the kingdom of God in Jesus was both present and future simultaneously.

Now the language we use for that is that it was both Already and not yet, and it was both at the same time. It was already making its way felt in the world because the king had already come. It was not yet in the sense that what had begun had not yet reached its final consummation.

To put that in other kinds of scholarly language the kingdom of God was inaugurated with the coming of Jesus. It is going to be Consummated at the second coming of Jesus but it is already in Fact that is quite the point of the whole New Testament that God's rule has Already begun.

It has begun in our world. It has already made its presence known the Spirit has already Come and is available to all God's people already. That is not something that is yet to come. That is what has already taken place.

Jesus Christ has already dealt Satan the decisive Absolutely crucial blow in the great holy war and Where was that in the cross and subsequent resurrection. If there is anything that belongs to the future it is resurrection.

What's going to happen at the end?

Resurrection.

That is one of the things that everybody agreed. In the great future time of God there is going to be resurrection.

Resurrection.

What happened is that the future and I'm going to give some language is going to sort of boggle your minds, but it's okay. We'll just keep with it until it finally penetrates. What happens in Jesus. Is that the future made its way into the present?

Already and. The evidence of it is in the resurrection because in the resurrection Jesus of Nazareth in the power of God grappled with the enemy at his last final stronghold and stranglehold over humankind and He triumphed over the enemy at his final point of power.

Namely death. When we celebrate Easter a week from next Sunday We are celebrating not just the raising of Jesus from the dead we are celebrating the fact that God has entered human history and has taken Satan by the throat and.

Has conquered him at his.

Absolutely most powerful point namely death and has already overcome death now. We still die. But the difference because the resurrection has happened is all the difference of night and day. The resurrection means that the resurrection has already begun and Therefore our resurrection is guaranteed by the resurrection that has already taken place.

Our resurrection is not yet, but the resurrection is already and Precisely because it has already happened There is no question about our future. Our future is the future of those who are raised in Christ Jesus.

Now we haven't experienced that yet. We've experienced some of the you know what I call the initial breath of the power of it and our entire lives as believers in the New Testament is an existence in This tension between the already and not yet.

Now you miss that tension and you're going to go into heresy of one kind or another or if not heresy, you're going to go into some abuses of understanding the New Testament. This by the way is biblical language.

John says it doesn't he first John 3.

Already.

We are the children of God, but It doth not yet appear what we shall be. Now are we going to be different from what we are? Well, yes, and no. Okay, already. We're what we're going to be but we are not yet what we're going to be.

I Know that sounds strange, but that's simply the way it is. Everything in the New Testament is predicated on that reality. Already we are what we are going to be but we're not yet what we're going to be.

Already we are God's children.

It just hasn't yet.

Come into that whole fullness that we're going to someday know and experience. You're still looking at me with that puzzle. Look, I'm gonna try it one more time this time with an illustration. Because if you don't get this you miss everything I Mean I might as well close the New Testament.

Everything is predicated on this understanding. I could take you from here and for the next 50 hours simply go through the New Testament page by page by page and show you That everything in the New Testament Paul's understanding of justification is ultimately predicated on this on this framework.

Justification for Paul happens when in the in the past or in the future. Huh both exactly it's already happened and it's gonna happen. But what's gonna happen is predicated on what's already happened.

Now you understand that that is so radicalized Paul that his entire existence was changed by coming to grips with that one reality. As A Jew when did he expect to be justified? Huh. As a Jew what kind of understanding of justification did he have?

Future. And when in the future at the end. I mean when the books are open.

Paul or.

One of the other the problem that Paul experienced was he didn't know which it was going to be. That's why Romans 7 is not the experience of his living as a Christian it's the experience of his living as a man under law and you cannot make that a Christian life because the whole problem of Romans 7 Has to do with what is it like to be a person under law?

Whatever else Paul was he wasn't a person under law. Now the point of that passage is very clear under law what happens. You can never be sure why because what does law do? Save huh? What law continually does is.

Demonstrate how far wrong?

It's the mirror that shows you where the dirt is all over your face. But it doesn't have a single ounce of water and soap to do anything about it. And every time the law is read Paul says blindness and guilt and condemnation.

Why? Because the law says thou shalt not covet. And I didn't even know I was covetous until the law said thou shalt not covet. And then the sin that was already resident me sprang to life and I died. I didn't lie die because of the law.

I died because of the sin that was resident in my life. It was the law that made me aware of my deadly existence. And he cries out in his anxiety Who can deliver me from this deadly existence? And the reason for it is because Paul Expected down here at the end to be justified or not justified at the end of his life at the eschaton God was going to pronounce.

Okay, or no, okay, and.

He lived in absolute anxiety because the law said in order to be okay. You got to be like this and here's Paul struggling along down here under here being what he was. You know what happened to Paul in the Damascus Road?

God took justification out of the future and put it in his past. He says there is therefore now.

No.

Condemnation that word is a judicial term. Still there is no judgment for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the law of sin and flesh but who live in the Spirit. It was removing justification from the future and putting in his past that guaranteed the future.

Justification and that's what freed him up. He didn't have to work in order to be justified. He was already justified. That freed him up to work and the difference was the difference of night and day.

Already not yet. Everything is to be understood within that eschatological framework. Well, I'll go to the illustration. This illustration comes right out of Switzerland. Oscar Cullman.

Teaches at Basel World War two.

Do any of you have?

Faint dim distant recollections of in school studying about World War two. Sorry, some of us lived through the war. Yeah, I mean we're dating ourselves, but it's okay. I Think what the thing is overwhelming me is that I teach young people for whom the war is only something they've read about.

And suddenly I'm aware of how old I really am. I Mean our lives were so determined by World War two that were still marked by what happened during that war. We can't help ourselves. That's the way we are.

So this illustration comes out of World War two. Never heard of D-Day. Can you give me the date of D-Day? June 6 1944. What happened on D-Day the largest armada in human military history? That had been assembling for for over a year and England and every place elsewhere was possible.

In the northern Atlantic. And on D-Day June 6 1944 in the form of five huge armies they crossed the channel and established a foothold on Normandy and Planted the Allied flags and said this is our turf.

20-hour day. At the end of that 20-hour day five beachheads had been established and They had been established in such a way that there was never ever again any question about the outcome of the war.

That had been determined at D-Day on D-Day with the planting of those Allied flags on Normandy the soil of Normandy. They spelled the death knell to the Nazi regime. Can anybody give me the date of the next great event in the war?

It's called V-Day and stands for the day of victory. Interesting interesting. Most Americans don't get it at all and the reason most Americans don't get it because we have two V-Days. Victory in Europe and victory in Japan and Because of that I can understand American confusion.

I. And I've had only four people in all my life that could answer that question. I want to suggest to you that that very fact is an interesting phenomenon. I'm surprised that my Norwegian friends cannot remember V-Day.

Okay, you've got it good. I mean, I don't I expect that in Europe you understand because that was such a significant event in people's lives the 8th of May 1945. Get the dates. Six six. Five. Well do it your way.

Eight five. Forty-five that's an 11 month period. V-Day. Never a question that this was going to happen never. It was just a matter of when. And the reason there was never a question is because that had already been decided here.

Now I.

Understand that Americans and I'm going to speak as an American and I do that very gingerly when I come to the European soil. Because we Americans sort of were latecomers in the war and and you know We did it from a distance.

We didn't experience the kind of suffering that the Europeans did. But what you need to hear from an American is that more American lives were lost in that 11 month period Than in all of the other years of the war in all of the battlefronts.

More lives lost right there, but there was never a question about how it was going to turn out. It wasn't a question of whether people were going to still die. Whether there were still battles to be fought.

There was never a question during those Bitter winter months in the Battle of the Bulge as to whether it was really going to happen or not. There was only one question and that was when? Now that is exactly how the New Testament understands the kingdom of God.

In the coming of Jesus God planted his flag on this enemy turf and said this is my planet. I claim it in the name of the cross and Through the resurrection he declared that there is going to be a V day that is going to consummate what has begun and our Entire existence is lived in the certainty of the future.

Predicated on what has already happened in the past. There's never a question about how it's going to come out. It is simply a matter of when it's going to come to its conclusion. There has never been a promise that we're not going to have to fight battles.

There has never been a single promise that we're not going to die. What we have been promised is that we win no matter what happens. We win if we live. We win if we die. We win in rejoicing. We win in suffering.

We win because God has already done the winning. It is simply a matter of his bringing it to conclusion and he's inviting us to be a part of the mop-up operation. And the mop-up operation is what you and I are engaged in and that may cost us our lives.

But so what? When did that become important? So you're crazy? No, I'm not crazy. I'm I'm Christian. I'm New Testament. The future has already entered the present age.

God has already triumphed.

He has already secured my life and what he is asking us to do is to live the future in the present age. We live between the times. Living out the future that is to come but living it out in the present age always living out the future.

But living it in the present.

That's why we're going to be crazy.

Because our values are not existent or predicated on the present age. Our values have to do with the new age God's kingdom it has to do with a future that God has already inaugurated in Jesus Christ. But discipleship still means the cross.

To eliminate the cross is to eliminate too much.

It's to eliminate the whole thing. That's the nature of our discipleship all the way to the end.

But we win.

That's why the great picture in the book of Revelation chapter 12 Jesus. There's two pictures simultaneously one to be understood in light of the other one. The Messiah is about to be born and in the process of his about to be born Satan is going to swallow him up.

But instead what happens. He's caught up to heaven. John says let's try another picture and we'll get this thing in better perspective. When that happened, he says it was like war taking place in heaven the angels of God led by the great archangel and Satan and his hosts were in great conflict in the Great battle that Jesus Christ Messiah was engaged in.

And what happened? Satan lost. He was cast down out of heaven. And what happened when he was cast down out of heaven. It says that immediately they sprang into joy singing rejoice O heavens because.

Salvation has come.

Then it says woe to you on earth Because Satan has been cast down to you and he knows his time is limited and he's gonna wreak his havoc on the people of.

God.

But John says it's okay because they overcame him. How? By the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their own lives even unto death. If you ever noticed in the New Testament that rejoicing and suffering are always brought together.

You rejoice in suffering. You rejoice in suffering. That doesn't mean because we're a little bit of a general. I mean, it's not because we're a bunch of crazies is because we're really crazy. And the reason we are so is because our lives have been secured by the eternal God.

We don't have to secure our existence anymore. God's rule has come. And because God's rule has come that's freed me from the need to secure my own existence. And even in suffering one can rejoice. That doesn't mean we look for suffering to rejoice in.

We simply rejoice in suffering. Because that's the nature of our living out in this present age.