Fee, The Nature of the Kingdom, Lesson 1, part 2

The Apocalyptic Background of “This Age” and “The Age to Come”

The apocalyptists had given up on history. They had been down for so long that they were no longer looking for something to happen within the ordinary framework of history. What they looked for was God to step in from outside of history as it were and bring history to an end conclude things and usher in a brand new age.

It is out of this period therefore that the language Arose that you and I meet all the time in the New Testament. It is the language of this age and.

The age to come.

Now you recognize that kind of language. You don't find it in the Old Testament. It's simply not found there anywhere. It is thoroughgoing in the New Testament. Where that language comes from is this apocalyptic period?

Where they begin to re-express the hope for the future in terms of this age and the age to come. This line is the end and they are looking for the end in cataclysmic terms. What I call the great kablooey.

The.

Ultimate stepping in by God into history and just bringing it to a smashing conclusion. Sometimes with a Messiah sometimes without a Messiah, but the one constant thing in all of these documents from this period these apocalyptic documents is this is this motif that this age is an evil age.

And the reason we know it's evil is that things are all out of whack. The good guys are down. The bad guys are up. Sin is everywhere. Rebellion is to be found in the whole of human society people are not serving God their idolaters and Especially the prevalence of sickness sin.

I mean sickness and and demonic possession all of this was evidence to them that this whatever else it is is Satan's age and The righteous are just sort of hanging in there Waiting for God to bring this age to an end.

And he was going to do it with this dramatic Conclusion somehow it would be such a great momentous event that the whole world would recognize it when it occurred. To say it's expressed in a whole variety of ways you find yourself in the in the apocalypse of Moses or the ascension of Moses and The the people of Israel.

God has done it in such a dramatic way that the people of Israel are suddenly Transported in heaven and there over the balustrades of heaven are mocking the sinners who are being cursed to hell that's probably the most dramatic expression that we find but all of these writers have the same kind of motif a Powerful powerful act of God that's simply going to bring a conclusion to this age.

And of course what they're looking for is the coming age. And the coming age is going to be the time in which God is going to rule and of course therefore It is in this kind of understanding that the language the kingdom of God arises.

It belongs to this.

Understanding of things where Satan's age is going to be overtaken by God's rule. In Fact that's the proper translation for the word. Hey boss. Alaya tooth a ooh, which we translate the kingdom of God.

It means the time of God's rule.

John the Baptist and the Call to Repentance

God's rule now it is into this kind of messianic Hope and may I say fervor? Since this this period especially the Especially the post-maccabean period a lot a great deal of hopes went into the Maccabean period in Israel's history and Once the Maccabees turned out to be like all of their predecessors the Maccabees what 166 165 as I tell my survey class Kings make horrible priests.

You never want the king and the priest to have the same body. Because when you've got clout in the king and God on your side Corruption is inevitable. You cannot have a king and a priest. Oh, you might have one but his son isn't gonna make it.

That's exactly what happened to the Maccabees. So by the third generation the Maccabees were more corrupt than their predecessors who were ruling from the outside. So even though they were independent they no longer Experienced that there was nothing in terms of of God's rule or God's justice and so after the Maccabean period this apocalyptic thing really intensified and there is this tremendous Fervor and hope and expectation that God would finally step on the scene and do his thing.

Now it's into that kind of fervor. You understand that there appeared in Israel out in the desert a wild figure of a man Who had a strange suit of clothes and an even stranger diet and he had a kind of singular announcement We're at the brink.

He said We stand right here.

It's about to happen.

God's rule is about to overtake us. Are you ready? Are you prepared for the coming of the rule of righteousness? So if you're not repent be baptized. Baptism was their way of identifying with John saying he's right.

I'm wrong. I'm a sinner. I'm not ready for the coming rule of God's righteousness. So I repent of my sins and I make myself ready in righteousness for the coming rule of righteousness. His announcement was Basically an announcement of judgment.

This point he fitted into the whole prophetic apocalyptic mold. The winnowing fork is in his hand. He's gonna burn the chaff. Gather the wheat. Now it's in this kind of context that Jesus of Nazareth came down from his home in Galilee and Was baptized of John and identified with the John movement.

You understand that's what he was doing. He was Identifying with the movement of John the Baptist and he submitted to John's baptism. And it's in that great event of his submitting to John's baptism That we're told the climatic climactic event happened in Jesus own life.

There was a voice from heaven and there was the rending of heaven and the coming of the dove. And that voice from heaven declared his messianic destiny reaffirmed for him who he was and.

What he was about.

And the coming of the dove the symbol of the Holy Spirit announced for him or an equipped him For the ministry that God had called him to Namely to set it in motion to get this rule of God going now. Apparently immediately following this event in the river Jesus spent some time with John the Baptist in his movement.

We're told in John's gospel that he and his disciples baptized people not with John, but as a Baptistic movement alongside of John at some crisis in Jesus life He abandoned the river and went into the synagogues of Galilee.

Now the unanimous Witness of the Gospels or at least of the synoptic Gospels is that that crisis that caused Jesus to abandon the river and End up doing a radically different thing from John where the people came out to him and he announced God's coming judgment.

We're told that Jesus after the arrest of John came into the synagogues of Galilee and went from synagogue to synagogue seeking out the people and Announcing a radically different message from John's.

His message was the good news the good news. Have you heard the good news? God's rule is at hand now. Probably the crisis event was in fact what happened to him at the desert. Or he had to sort out what took place in the river.

Remember the voice from heaven said you are my son the beloved one language that is taken from Genesis 22 and from Psalm 2. Language that reflects the fact that the Messiah is going to be God's triumphant King who's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron.

You are my son.

The beloved one and then the rest of the voice from heaven says. And with you I am well pleased. Language that is taken directly out of Isaiah 42 1. And Isaiah 42 1 is the first of four songs in Isaiah 42 to 53 that we know is the servant songs.

Where a mysterious figure known as the servant of Yahweh is going to suffer on behalf of the people of Israel and Finally the picture culminates in 53 where he suffers on their behalf for their sins. Now.

We don't know what goes on in the inner workings of Jesus that's not given to us in the New Testament you understand. All we know are the great moments. But you can be sure that whatever else. What happened to him in that river was a dramatic moment in his life and from that?

Experience at some point I Think probably a little later than immediately he went into the desert to sort it out and. And what he was doing in the desert being tested by Satan Had to do with the two things that the voice from heaven had affirmed one his unique relationship to the father as son and Secondly his messianic destiny as the suffering servant came and you'll notice that the whole testing that goes on.

We don't know what goes on for 40 days all we're told is that Satan was out there giving him the business for 40 days at the end of that 40-day period. All of this is intensified into into three testings.

If you are son of God make bread out of stones. And you understand that the whole point of that testing is for him to. Shall I say for him to abuse? The relationship of father and son as the incarnate one whether he would himself Trust God or whether he would somehow buy his relationship with God as son let that be the thing that made his His earthly ministry what it was.

Don't know if it's ever occurred to you, but in all of the miracles of Jesus He never performed one in his own behalf not one. Always acts his his acts of mercy on the behalf of others was limitless. But not once does he try to extricate himself in some miraculous way.

Now he does in fact extricate himself, but there is no hint anywhere that he performed a miracle to do it. Whatever else that testing meant in the desert it meant that. Then we're told that he left the desert and he's on his way up to Jerusalem.

This is in Luke's Gospel and His way up to Jerusalem. They come to a very high mountain. And Luke says that in a moment of time he let him see all the nations of the earth. And he says if you'll go the route of popular expectation Be Satan's kind of Messiah Conquer by sword and power all the nations of the world will follow you.

Some point you have to come to grips with the central difference between Jesus and Mohammed understand you're gonna have to come to grips with the essential difference between Jesus and Mohammed and the reason you're gonna have difficulty ever converting Muslims is they have gone the way of Satan and The reason they've gone the way of Satan is because Satan has made it a very very attractive picture.

Power.

Triumph glory. Smashing heads the holy war do it Mohammed's way and the whole world will follow. If you conquer them God took the risk if you will of going his own way the risk of an incarnation and a suffering servant who instead of creaming his enemies Would die for them and Win them over by love and grace.

That's pretty risky business on God's part. And that's the only message you've got you understand. That's the only thing you've got. Against the power of the sword. That doesn't look like much but it's the only thing you've got so don't move that lose that.

That is the ultimate power of God. Paul says if I can bring Paul in for a minute. That's the great testing. And Jesus says no to Satan. He's not gonna go that route and finally takes him to the pinnacle of the temple right up to Jerusalem and Certainly some of the thing that's going on There is if you're gonna be a Messiah and get a messianic movement going then where do you start the action?

Well in the Holy City, of course, and how do you do it with a big splash a big display? No splash. Throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple. God's angels will bear you up. Get all the press photography out there.

Get the Jerusalem Times Herald all the rest of it. Let's start a messianic movement with power and miracle. And instead Jesus says no to Satan and we're told that from the event of John's arrest Jesus came into the synagogues of Galilee and announced the good news the good news the good news.

Now what is the good news? Well, the good news is first of all that the time is fulfilled the time is fulfilled.

The Kingdom as God’s Rule, Not a Place

And.

Everything that Jesus is and did and said in some way was a proclamation that their hopes and expectations are Coming to realization in his ministry. Now that much I hope we can understand and I've tried to do in 30 minutes.

What should take two and a half hours you understand but that's basically the outline of it. We've got to get on to the next phrase because here's the cruncher for us. And I'm surely gonna run out of time tonight, but that's alright.

We'll just go four hours and we'll break it wherever. Four hours, you know, wherever each time breaks each evening. The biggest difficulty for us is with that second phrase. Second clause. The kingdom of God is at hand now.

Our problems stem from two things.

One.

We have a rather bad.

Misunderstanding of the term kingdom. Now, I don't know if The other European languages we have here have the same difficulty. English does I think they do in general, but I'm not sure of this.

That law royal.

Did you something like that? Yeah, I can't pronounce it. I can just read it. And in German the. Yeah, that's the right this goddess, huh? Yes, that's right. Good. It's okay now in English. The word kingdom is loaded with some foreign matter.

Okay in English. The foreign matter is that whenever we hear that word we almost invariably think in terms of a realm a place. For us that is a term that belongs to the category space.

Geography.

Okay, a kingdom is what the Netherlands is. What. And I'm not sure now about all of my European geography because things are changing. Is Norway still yes a Kingdom is what Norway is.

It's a place.

Now that thinking is what's going to do us in. Because the kingdom of God is not a place to which we're going. It doesn't belong to the category of space essentially at all. It belongs to the category of time and.

Therefore it has to do with reign.

Or rule.

Not realm. You notice when Jesus is asked about the kingdom. He's never asked what? He's asked when and When. He's asked where. It doesn't mean place. They mean where do I see it in evidence? You understand it's a time when God rules.

Hmm. I'll give this next sentence slowly for the sake of those whose English is not first language, but you'll catch The usage of the word kingdom in this sentence it is perfectly good English for us to say during the kingdom of George the third The American colonies revolted against the kingdom of England.

Okay, perfectly good English during the kingdom of George the third The American colonies revolted against the kingdom of England. Now we can substitute during the what of George the third.

The rain.

You see there's an England before and after George, but there's only one period of time that can be called the kingdom of George the third. You understand now what we're talking about that is the essential matter in this language.

The kingdom of God has to do with the time.

When God.

Exercises his sovereign rule over the affairs of mankind. The time when God steps on the scene and ushers in his Rule his reign and it is not essential that there be a place although obviously That finally must come into focus and there must be subjects and all of that.

But it is essentially focusing upon the king and his rule. God's rule is what we're talking about. And that's one of our problems. The other problem is the one that probably has caused most people to just quit reading Jesus in terms of the kingdom of God and This is the one that we're not going to have time to elaborate on enough tonight to conclude unfortunately.

This is why I need notes. They keep me in tow you understand. I can spin off the top of my head for 10 hours, but I have to have notes in order to Do this properly, but anyway? The other matter that is terribly confusing to most people and for good reason is That Jesus speaks of the kingdom in two different ways.

He speaks of it ambiguously.

On the one hand.

Jesus speaks of the kingdom as a future event. But just as surely he also speaks of the kingdom as a present reality.

The Kingdom as Future Event and Present Reality

Now.

Here is where?

Ordinarily, I would simply spend something close to a half hour to 45 minutes going through texts and Showing you how crucial it is that we hear what Jesus is saying. Let me see if for just a moment I can categorize some texts for you.

One of the large categories of texts that Come under the idea of the kingdom of God is a future event. Fits into the whole prophetic apocalyptic tradition. Where in the future there is going to be a great day of God in which?

What I call the order of life is going to be reversed. The single Significant text here is the first Shall be last and the last shall be first a great reversal. The people that think they're in in the outside and the people that don't think they have a hope end up inside.

Blessed are you who mourn now for you shall be comforted?

Blessed are you who are huh?

Hungry now for you shall be filled. Blessed are the poor. For they shall experience God's kingdom. Likewise, of course the other side of that in Luke's gospel in chapter 6 is alas or woe to you who are full now.

You're going to experience hunger. There's going to be a great reversal. This topsy-turvy world is going to experience its right upping. That's not English, but it's alright you understand what I mean, yeah, I Don't mean up writing because that would mean something else.

It's got to be right upping, you know, it's got to be put right. What's wrong is got to be eliminated and what's right has to come in its place. The first shall be last the last first. Sometimes this takes form this takes expression in the form of the messianic banquet.

They were looking for a great day of feasting. You remember the motif from this morning about eating in the presence of God. They had made this an eschatological. Hope they were looking for one great banquet in God's presence forever.

They were gonna eat at his table. Well, that's part of even the psalm that we were doing this morning. Psalm 23. Now prepare us a table before me and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

That became a future hope in Israel of sitting at God's banquet. Have you ever noticed how many times they talk about eating in the kingdom in the New Testament? Maybe you've never noticed those texts because that's the last thing you and I ever think about doing in the kingdom.

Remember Jesus is teaching one time and somebody in the crowd blurts out and think of this. Here's one of the great and it's a beatitude. It comes out in the form of blessed, you know. Talk about being blessed.

Here's the person who's blessed. Blessed is the person who gets to sit at table in the kingdom of God and eat bread. You imagine you doing that in the presence of Jesus. I mean that is so foreign to our understanding of Jesus of Nazareth that when you read that text.

You don't even know it's in the gospel. In fact, I would dare say that not a one of you can locate that in the New Testament. Some of you are trying Luke 14. Here is somebody in the crowd shouting out talk about blessedness.

Here's the great blessed event sitting at table in the kingdom. Well, Jesus takes up that motif and remember he says and this is now in Matthew 11 he says they're going to come from east and west and do what and Sit at table in the kingdom of God while the sons of the kingdom are thrown out a great reversal.

Jesus parables of the banquet of the feasting of the you know all have to do with the same motif. It's picked up. In fact in the Revelation as the marriage supper of the Lamb the great eschatological banquet.

Put that into Jesus own context, by the way, and that's why that's why after Jesus feeds the 5 ,000 in John's gospel. It says they came to make him king. They saw in the feeding of the 5 ,000 the beginning of the great banquet.

The great bread dole.

Here is God's King. How do we know that it's God's King. Because he has taken these few loaves and fish and has fed the multitude. Surely this is the event of the end. They read that eschatologically Jesus has to take the whole day to sort of get them off that and finally he ends up with only 11 12 on his Hands at the very end of the day.

It's one great messianic day in Jesus ministry. But it's the great reversal motif. Where those who don't expect to have anything end up eating a table in the kingdom. Well, there's all kinds of other sayings that have to do with being a future event.

Let's take the sayings of readiness for the coming of the Son of Man. You don't know the day nor the hour when the Son of Man comes. Clearly there's an event in the future that he calls the coming of the Son of Man.

In fact, in fact some radical German scholars have argued that that's the only time Jesus uses the Son of Man. Authentically that is all other times are not Jesus. But the church reading back into Jesus and that Jesus thought the Son of Man to be something somebody different from himself.

There's gonna come a Son of Man in the future. I Think that can be easily refuted in a scholarly way and I'm not going to go into that. But the point is that there's a future coming of a Son of Man. Of the Son of Man.

With the clouds of heaven.

Power and glory still in the future. And then of course think of all those sayings that require watchfulness. Watch watch watch. For you don't know the day nor the hour.

Now all of those sayings.

Are sayings that have to do with the fact that for Jesus himself the kingdom of God is still a future event. And now I'm stuck with what to do with this Business because I'm right in the middle of something and I've got one minute left on this Tape because what we need to say next that will not be able to elaborate on but I've got to bring them together and we'll start with this tomorrow night is That just as surely as we have all these things and by the way in my court course in Jesus I take one full hour to make this point that for Jesus the kingdom was still a future event and I all I do is Go through text and show how text after text after text shows that for Jesus himself.

It was still a future event. The problem is that there are equally not as many but equally as Significant texts that tell us that for Jesus himself and his own ministry that great future event had already become a present reality.

Already the poor are sitting at table with him and Jesus says now is a time not for fasting But for feasting because the bridegroom is with them sitting at table with the outcasts. Now my problem is that there's so many texts and my mind is running with all of them.

And I'm not gonna try to squeeze them in before the time is finished. So what I'm gonna do is the worst imaginable thing when I cut it off right here. And we're gonna pick it up tomorrow night right here.

If somebody can remember what last text I gave We'll go from here and show how that equally we must see that for Jesus It was a present reality and then try to figure out how in the world we can square that because Everything hinges on our being able to do that everything.

It is absolutely essential to our understanding Jesus that we can put that somehow into some kind of Tension and hold it together in some way. Well, the whole New Testament is finally predicated on our understanding that really everything in the New Testament.

So we'll pick it up tomorrow evening at this point.