We’ve been talking about the kingdom of God for the last two months. For many of you, this has changed how you think about Christianity and it should. For many of us we have been taught cultural Christianity, not the Christianity that Jesus taught. Cultural christianity takes all the good news out of the gospel for us today.

The kingdom of God is the central message of Jesus. For many, we’ve come to falsely understand the kingdom of God as being an equivalent of heaven or eternal life, but Jesus never talked about it that way.

Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was something that was at hand, within reach, and available now, today. Then we looked at the place where Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” And we looked at the parables where Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is like this and it’s like that, it’s like buried treasure, it’s like the smallest of seeds that grows into largest of trees.”

For all of you who have been with us for the series, you should now have a good idea about what the kingdom of God is, but the question that I’ve been purposely avoiding until now is, “How does the kingdom of God grow inside of us?” How do we get the DNA of heaven to grow inside of us? How do we get the good things of life to grow inside of us and the dark things of life that grow inside of us to leave?

If you’re unclear about what the kingdom of God is, then I highly suggest going out to our website and review my sermon notes of those messages or the MP3 recordings of those messages, because growth as a Christian is nearly impossible without a right understanding of the kingdom.

The condition of our hearts are central to growing the kingdom of God inside of us. Just as a seed in a garden can’t grow in acidic soil, so it is that the kingdom of God doesn’t grow in an acidic heart. So today, let’s look to the master gardener and let’s see what he has to say about growing the kingdom of God inside of us. How do we get the DNA of heaven growing in our hearts?

Jesus said, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean (or pruned) because of the word I have spoken to you. John 15:1-3

Read the rest of this entry »

Props: 25 or more pairs of various different looking glasses, goggles, sunglasses, 3d glasses, etc.

Last week we looked at a very small part of Matthew 6:33 where Jesus said, “Seek first his (referring to God) kingdom”, or said another way is “Seek first the kingdom of God”.

In that message we looked at each of those four words. We said that “Seek” means that it’s not going to be obvious. The kingdom of God, as Jesus stated in the parable of the treasure is hidden. You’re going to have to want to find it. It’s going to take time, and persistence. You’re not just going to stumble upon it and say, “Oh, what do we have here.”

The second word is “First”, seek first. That means that there are other choices that will vie for our attention. Other things will probably try and crowd out that which is most important and you’ll have to make some decisions. Will I seek first the kingdom of God, or will I seek something else.

The third word is “His”, seek first his, which in this case refers to Father God.  His is a possessive word. It’s not ours, it’s his – it’s the Father’s. We don’t own it. We can’t have it, and we can’t get it apart from God. We’ll have to get it from him and from him alone, because it’s his.

And the fourth word is “Kingdom” – the kingdom of God. We’ve spent seven weeks talking about the kingdom of God. We said many people have thought that the kingdom of God is something that you will only experience in heaven, but Jesus rarely talks about it in those terms. He says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” It’s at hand. It’s within reach. It’s available now.

Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a small seed that is planted in your heart and it can grow to the largest of trees so that it takes over your garden and crowds everything else out. The kingdom of God is like a seed with the DNA of heaven planted in your heart and it has the ability to grow and produce all the fruit of heaven crowding out all other evil and all other ways that are not God’s.

We said that if we choose to seek first the kingdom of God that God becomes king of our life and his will is done through us and his Spirit works through us to do his good will. That’s one choice. We also said that if we don’t grow the kingdom of God inside of us, then the old saying is true, because you can just be full of yourself. You can make all the decisions and you can choose what’s right and what’s wrong and you can decide how to live in every area of your life and you can bear the responsibility for where your life goes and how it turns out. You can do that. You have that choice. You can either be full of the Spirit of God inside of you and you can decide to follow his will and his truth and his idea of goodness in your life or you can be full of yourself with you sitting at the center of you controlling what goes on in your life. You can seek first your kingdom or you can seek first your kingdom. It’s your choice.

Ok, let’s just assume that we’ve got that one settled. Let’s just assume that we want to live with God at the center of our lives. We want him to be our king. Maybe we’re honest enough to recognize God is not the king in our lives yet, or at least not in every area of our life – that’s good that we recognize and admit that, but how do we go forward. What does that look like? That leads us to the next two words in Matthew 6:33. Read the rest of this entry »

8-14-11 Kingdom of God – What’s at the Center?

Illustration need: Big Balloon

We’re in our seventh week of this series on the Kingdom of God. We’ve spent a lot of time on this series, because I’m convinced that many Christians have either no idea what the kingdom of God is, or they have a very distorted view of what the kingdom of God is. I was 35, and in my second year of seminary, before I found out that the kingdom of God is the central theme of the Bible and the central them of Jesus’ teaching. What’s worse is that I had grown up in church.

We’ve said that many people think the reason that Jesus came was to forgive people of their sins, or to help people get into heaven, or to teach them how to live good, moral lives, but none of these is the focus of why Jesus came. His self-proclaimed reason for coming was to preach and teach about the kingdom of God. Jesus taught about heaven, the forgiveness of sins, and morality, but these are part of something Jesus calls the kingdom of God. They are a part, but not the whole.

Imagine dropping a large rock into a pond. The kingdom of God is the rock and it makes a big splash. Morality, forgiveness of sins, teaching about heaven, are all the ripples created by the rock being dropped into the pond. They are not the rock. They are a result of the rock.

During this series on the kingdom of God we’ve been looking at the parables of the kingdom. In one set of parables Jesus began the parable with “The kingdom of God is like” and then he went on to tell us what the kingdom of God is like right now. How it works, what it looks like, where we can find it, and how we can experience it. Then, we spent a couple of weeks looking at parables where Jesus began with “the kingdom of God will be like” and in those parables Jesus taught about what would happen someday. And we said Jesus didn’t just give us those parables to teach us about what would happen someday so that we could know what it would be like, but rather, he gave us those parables because preparation is necessary today for the kingdom of God to grow in us.

Today, we’re not going to look at a parable as we have the other six weeks, but a command. No longer is Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God or telling us what the kingdom of God will be like, in this passage he’s telling us what to do in light of what we’ve heard about the kingdom of God. Today we’re going to look at just the first four words of Jesus command. Next week we’ll focus on the rest of his statement.

Seek first . . . his (God’s) kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow (Live at peace in the present), for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:33-34 (NIV) Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ready for Heaven? Are you ready for a time when God will wipe away every tear and right every wrong and stomp out all evil? Yeah, I think we all look forward to that day don’t we. Ok, let me ask you another question that is very much like the second one. Are you READY . . . for heaven? Are you preparing for heaven? Are you well prepared for heaven? These are two very different questions and for probably all of us the answer to the first question is “Yes,” but for some of us, really all of us, we have further preparation for heaven.

There are things inside of us that are not ready for heaven. There is still evil within us that needs to be purified before they will be acceptable in heaven. We have work to do, but sometimes we get stuck in comfortable ruts and we forget that preparing for heaven is something that we need to do every day. Preparation for heaven is never done. Today we’re going to talk a bit about what God expects from us at the end of our lives so that we can be ready and well prepared when we get there.

We’re in this lengthy series on the kingdom of God, because for many of us, we’ve always equated the kingdom of God, heaven, and eternal life as synonyms that mean the same thing, but for Jesus they were very different. For many of us, we’ve believed that the kingdom of God is the same as heaven and that it’s something that we will experience only after we’ve died and gone to heaven. However, this is not how Jesus talked about the kingdom of God.

In first four parables that we’ve looked at, Jesus began each of them with the phrase, “The kingdom of God is like,” and in each of these parables he describes how the kingdom works in the present. It’s like yeast, it’s like buried treasure, it’s like a small seed that grows into a large tree, it’s like weeds that grow up next to wheat. In each of these parables Jesus is teaching us what the kingdom of God is like now, so that we can understand what it’s like and live into it.

Two weeks ago, we looked at the parable of the talents where Jesus described to us what the kingdom of God will be like some day. There will be an accounting of what we’ve done with what we’ve been entrusted. In that parable, Jesus told us about the kingdom of God in the future, so that we could make some decisions about how to live in the present. In that parable, the future instructed us about how we should live in the present if we want to experience the kingdom of God now and in the future.

The parable that we’re going to look at today is similar to the one two weeks ago, but yet different. In this parable, he begins with the words, “At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like.” Matthew 25

Read the rest of this entry »