The Kingdom Of God Series, “To Enter the Kingdom” - Dr. Gordon Fee, Part 3a

Okay, we're talking about Jesus and the Kingdom, and up to now we have gone through the first two of the sentences that Mark has brought together to summarize the ministry of Jesus. We noted first in our looking at this subject that it is the absolutely central thing that without which one cannot possibly understand what Jesus was all about.

That is, to miss the Kingdom of God and what it meant for Him to come and proclaim that is simply to miss Him. Then we noted what that would mean for Him, first of all, in terms of the kinds of expectations that were in Israel at the time that John the Baptist and then Jesus stepped on the scene, so that when Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news from God, the good news that He proclaimed was that the time is fulfilled, the time for those expectations to be realized is now at hand.

And then we looked at the theme, the Kingdom of God is at hand, noted first that the Kingdom of God is the time of God's reign, that it has to do with His time in establishing His rule in the affairs of man, and then noted what it would have meant for Him to have proclaimed that it is at hand.

And at that point we took up the theme of the mystery of the Kingdom, a mystery you'll recall that has two parts to it. One part of the mystery of the Kingdom is that it has to do with Jesus and who He is, that instead of coming in the kinds of expectations they were looking for to be fulfilled, in power, glory, triumph, He came in the humiliation of an incarnation.

Instead of creaming His enemies, He in fact submitted to them in an ignoble death and experienced their hatred and hostility to the point of crucifixion. That instead of triumphing over His enemies with power and might, He triumphed over them with forgiveness and grace.

That the king or the lion is a lamb, the king is a servant, God's triumph is found precisely in that mystery, the mystery that those who announce Him as Messiah learn immediately that the Messiah must go to Jerusalem and die.

It is clear from the Gospel of Mark and of course also then in Matthew and Luke that it is Jesus who alone knew the secret. And precisely because He alone knew the secret, He had to silence the demons who recognized Him.

He silenced those whom He healed unless they start a popular messianic movement. He swore His disciples to secrecy once He had let them in on the secret. The reason for that is that He alone knew the secret of the kingdom, that the kingdom in fact had come present precisely in His ministry, in the suffering servant of Yahweh.

Now, we also noted that there is therefore the flip side of that reality of the mystery of the kingdom, which is that the kingdom is therefore both already and not yet. That the future has been set in motion by the coming of Jesus, that the kingdom has been inaugurated, that God's rule has already begun, that what God is going to do at the second coming is to consummate what He has already set in motion with His first coming.

It is not going to be a new thing that He comes to do and to establish, it is simply going to be the consummation of that which He has already begun in the coming of the rule of God as it has come present in Jesus of Nazareth.

Entering the Kingdom Through Repentance and Faith

Now what we want to do tonight is to take up the theme of entering the kingdom. What does it mean for people like you and me? What does it mean to our warring, broken, bleeding world that God's rule has in fact already come present in Jesus of Nazareth?

Now, the key to our understanding that particular dimension of the kingdom of God is back to our summary text in Mark 1 15. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.

Now let me begin by establishing as solidly as I can and affirming as strongly as I can that when we begin to talk about entering the kingdom of God and hear it in terms of repent and believe the good news, that although in that particular saying they come in that order, that repentance and believing the good news in fact are not two separate things.

They are a single reality about entering the kingdom. That is, they must be held together. And may I say furthermore that believing the good news comes first. That is, you do not repent in order to enter the kingdom.

God's kingdom comes as his prior action. And precisely because we do not bring in the kingdom, God does. And in Christ Jesus, he has already begun the kingdom. That God's time has already begun in his action.

Therefore, the kingdom comes as his good news.

It is, remember the announcement, he came into Galilee proclaiming the good news.

The good news of the kingdom.

And our response to that good news is repentance. Now there's a certain sense therefore in which we're going to have to insist that it's true. You must repent in order to enter the kingdom. But I fear that kind of language because what that tends to do is make repentance a work.

Whereby God accepts us.

And that is precisely not what repentance is.

Repentance is a description of what happens to us after God accepts us. God's acceptance comes first and that leads to repentance.

And repentance therefore is a description of what takes place in our lives because God's.

Action is the first one.

God's prior action has come. He has preceded our repentance with his grace and mercy. Now that is rather thoroughgoing in the New Testament, of course, but it is thoroughgoing even in Jesus, although many people do not seem to hear it that way.

That is, there are those who tend to hear the message of Jesus as some kind of judgment or law that God, that he presents before us and then we have to somehow conform to if.

We're going to make it.

The good news is that we make it just because God's that way. He loves us, accepts us. It is that prior action of his accepting us, warts and all. Accepting us the way we are, forgiving us and loving us in our condition.

It is that prior acceptance of us that leads to repentance. And that is so thoroughgoing in the ministry of Jesus. This, of course, is explicated most thoroughly in the New Testament in the apostle Paul.

And it was in God's own providence that Paul's theology, although an awful lot of it, of course, in terms of his basic understandings of things, come out of his Judaism. His theology has been radically affected by the Damascus Road experience.

What Paul learned in Damascus, it took him a long while to sort it out, please, but you understand when I say when he learned at Damascus, is that God accepted him not because he was anything at all. He just accepted him graciously, freely, and lovingly.

And that acceptance by God, in fact, as he likes to remember it, you know, I who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, a violent man, but I received mercy. And it was that merciful action of God in his behalf when this one who thought he was.

Doing God a favor by his activities, and then God accepted him anyway, just what I call.

Just loved him, just did it.

Didn't love him because he just loved him.

He just placed his love upon him and accepted him just the way he was. And it was that acceptance of God that brought about Paul's repentance. And it's that, it is that thing in Paul that makes the great word in the New Testament.

Grace.

In fact, when we come to the ethics of the kingdom tomorrow night, we'll repeat this and hit it again because as someone has well said in the Christian faith, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude.

And until you learn that, you'll never learn the very basic understanding of what it means to be an ethical person in the kingdom of God. Now the problem, and you understand the difference is the difference in night and day.

It is not that one doesn't do good works. It's that the difference is that good works are a response to. We do good works because of, not in order that.

And as long as one is doing good works, including repentance in order to gain God's favor, we are going to miss that favor.

Besides you can't repent in order to gain God's favor. You received God's favor a long, long, long before you ever came to even think about repenting. God simply loves, accepts, and forgives. His action is the prior one.

So that in the New Testament, and in your understand, this is where Jesus makes the radical departure from John the Baptist. You remember when Jesus went to the river and there was a time when there was a river ministry for Jesus and his disciples.

Separate from John's, but a river ministry. There came a place in Jesus' life when he abandoned the river and went to the synagogues. And when he went to the synagogues, what we're told in the text is that he began to.

Announce the good news of the kingdom.

Now, all you have to do is look up all the business on John the Baptist and you'll recognize whatever else John preached. He didn't preach the good news of the kingdom. He preached the bad news of the kingdom.

In fact, John's message was pretty clear. Repent, get your act together.

God's about to step on the scene and he's going to have a winnowing fork in his hand. There's going to be judgment in his actions when he comes on the scene.

When God's kingdom comes, look out. And so they repented and were baptized, preparing themselves for God's coming kingdom of.

Righteousness. And all of the word in the message of John is that heavy word of judgment because of the coming rule of God. Jesus runs, as it were, to the synagogues and says, I won't try that trumpet thing.

Again. Oh, summation, the herald, the good news. What good news? God's rule has come.

Now, for most people, that's not good news. That's still a bad news thing.

God's rule means he's going to get me. For Jesus, God's rule is praise God.

He gets you.

God's rule comes as good news to set you free.

God rules.

You don't have to do it anymore.

That's the good news.

It comes as his gift.

Remember, Jesus said that. Fear not, little flock. It is the father's good pleasure to give you.

You can't earn it. You can't buy it.

You can't get God off your back with gifts or works or brownie points. You just have to accept that God accepts you the way you are.

Dirty, rotten skunk, warts and all with all of your filth.

He just accepts you that way. He doesn't say, clean up your act and then I'll love you. He says, I love you.

Now, clean up your act. And it's a world of difference.

Graciously, freely, he accepts us. That's the good news.

So that in the New Testament, in Jesus' ministry, the kingdom of God is the announcement of his acceptance of sinners. It's his sitting at table with outcasts.

It comes in the form of a joyous feast in the home of a tax collector, mind you. With all of the bad types surrounding the table, but accepted freely.

Comes in the form of a woman who in Luke's gospel in chapter 7, he says was the sinner of that city. It's his way of saying she was the town prostitute who comes in and does all of the shameful things in another man's house at the feet of Jesus.

Weeps at those feet, lets down her hair in public.

Religious are shocked.

Man, letting this woman touch him, do these kinds of things. And in my house, you and I would have thrown him out. Jesus tells a story about forgiveness. About people who owed an awful lot, who owed little.

And in this process of that story, here is a broken, fallen woman hearing the good news that she's been accepted and loved by the eternal God herself. All the religious don't like it, you understand, because the religious, the religious want things to be fair.

It's one of the rules of the religious.

You want things to be fair.

You understand, if we're going to work so hard for God,.

At least we ought to have special favors. You know, I mean, why do all this work? Unless God's going to like us a little better.

The religious never can quite tolerate God's acceptance of sinners.

The reason we have a hard time with God's acceptance of sinners is because we think God accepts us because we're good. Because we're on his side. We go bursting into the temple and burst out in our prayer,.

Oh God, you're so lucky to have me on your side.

I'm such a decent guy.

And look at all the wonderful things I can do for you.

And I'm not at all, I'm not at all like that guy over there.

The other guy, he can't even look up. He just says, Oh God, have mercy, have mercy. And he goes away experiencing the kingdom of God. You can't experience God's rule unless you experience the fact that tis mercy all, immense and free.

And oh my God, it found out me.

Tis mercy.

Everything is mercy.

Everything.

Talking with a fellow one time many years ago, and I was just beginning to discover the truth of God's grace. And I was excited and preaching on. He was lying down, he was a speaker, and I was just a young preacher.

I was cornering him, giving him all my wisdom. And he was lying back in a bed, and he just suddenly sat up in a bed, and he looked at me and said, Well Gordon, everything outside of hell is of grace. I'll never forget that.

Because that's true. Everything outside of hell is of grace. Everything. Tis mercy all. And these people who don't expect a thing, in fact, they have been told all their lives that they're sinners. That's the nature of the thing, you understand.

In order for yourself to be righteous, you have to make sure that there are enough people around whom you can call sinners and identify them as such. That's what gives you the leverage. Come on, that's true.

Just as long as we can identify the bad guys, that gives us a chance of being the good guys. And if you do that often enough to people, they're going to start believing that about themselves. And that's exactly where the Hamaaretz were in Judaism.

The people of the land, they were the sinners. They didn't have enough time to be righteous. And Jesus came and accepted them and ate dinner with them. Nobody had ever done that before. In fact, he invites them in one of the most marvelous moments in all of Scripture, and let alone all of human speech.

Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal God, stands before broken, bleeding humanity and says, Come to me, all who are laboring and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Now, please understand that does not mean get into a yoke alongside me.

If that's the image that conjures up in your mind, you're going to miss it. That is truly being unequally yoked together. The point of that text is not to be yoked with Jesus. He says, take my yoke upon you.

And the point of the text is he is addressing people who have been living under the awful yoke of the law that has been imposed upon them by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. And that yoke was not made to fit.

And they chafe and they bleed. And the yoke of the law leads to the yoke of sin. And here are people whose lives are being lived out with a yoke that is heavy, that they can't bear, that is grinding them into the ground and into the dirt.

And Jesus says, change yokes. That yoke doesn't fit. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. You'll find rest here.

This is the offer of the gift of God's rule.

It's his rule. There's yoke, but the yoke is easy. The burden is light.

It's a new age. It's the age of God's rule. This, I think, is illustrated probably best of all in the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was one of those kind of people you don't want God to be nice to. What you want is God to be fair.

You know what I mean by fair?

Fair is what we want God.

And we always want God to be fair. Remember, Jesus told a parable about that one time.

I'll interrupt myself.

Don't have notes. I can get away with that.

Remember, he is surrounded by all of these out-of-it types,.

All of these people that make the bottom of the list in the social register. They are the sinners, all of them. And they're his friends.

I know we hear that, but we never really quite believe that.

We really think if Jesus would come on the scene today,.

He'd be here with us. I never quite know what to do with that.

I'd like him to be here with us, but I get the feeling that he would probably continue to do it.

The way he did it.

Just befriend those. Absolutely,.

Those people that you and I wouldn't even let in this room.

Oh, I know, YWAMers aren't quite that bad,.

But you don't understand.

I mean, the religious are that way.

Jesus tells them a story.

Because the religious don't like what he's doing.

Makes them look bad.

Besides, it really does a number on their theology,.

And they can't quite handle a God who likes people like this.

They don't.

Who wants a God who likes them?

So Jesus tells them a story about a fellow that had a vineyard,.

Went into the city, I mean into the town,.

Got some people, bargained with him for a day's wage. Day's wage for a day's work.

They went into the vineyard,.

Went back at nine o 'clock in the morning.

There's some guys that hadn't gone to work,.

So he bargained with them for what it says.

And the next thing for these guys,.

What's fair?

That's what it says.

What's fair? I'll pay you.

They went into the vineyard,.

Goes back at noon,.

Finds some more guys,.

And he puts them into the vineyard.

Three o 'clock in the afternoon, he still finds some more. I mean, these fellows are really the out-of-it bad types of a town. I mean, guys that don't show up to the labor exchange until three o 'clock in the afternoon don't deserve anything.

He puts them in the vineyard.

And then five o 'clock, five o 'clock, the guys that do the whittling, you know, and the telling the stories. I mean, the guys that are worth nothing, they aren't worth anything.

He puts them in the vineyard, one hour. And then he starts to pay them. He pays the guys that have been out there one hour,.

And he pays them a whole day's wage. Now, you understand that the point of the story lies right there, because the guys that have been out there all day,.

Their mental computers are already going like this. Here is one decent chap. If he paid those no-goods one day's wage for one hour's work,.

Wait till we get there.

And when they get there, they get exactly what they bargained for, a day's wage for a day's work.

And that just absolutely ticks them off.

And they cry out, it's not fair.

You know what's not fair? Not what they got, what the other guy got.

That is what destroys them.

They can't handle the fact that God treats these, in fact, that's the word it says,.

You have made them equal to us. Imagine that.

I mean, who wants a God that loves his enemies as much as he loves you?

And I don't need that in a God. I want God to side with me against my enemies.

Who wants a God who loves his enemies as much as he loves him? And the idea that he was not going to be fair.

I mean, whatever else we want God to be fair. Always when it comes to the other guy. Merciful for us, you understand, but fair with the other guy. The kingdom of God is just like Jesus. Accepts those no good people, puts them out into the vineyard and gives them a whole day's wage.

Or do you begrudge my generosity? Jesus says, because your eye is evil and mine is good.

Kingdom of God comes as his gracious activity.

Kingdom of God is revealed in a prayer that he teaches his disciples to pray. It says, when you pray, say Abba. Kingdom of God, the subjects are children who know a father's warm and loving embrace. Who come running to the eternal God and say Abba, Abba.

It's the good news of the kingdom.