Today I’d like to speak about the kingdom of God. When
people hear the phrase, “kingdom of God,” they might think of many different
things. A king, a throne, a crown might come to mind. Politics and borders and
wars might come to mind. All these things can be incorporated into the
understanding of the kingdom of God and it wouldn’t be wrong to do so. But I
think it is helpful to have something that pulls all this stuff together. The
thing that does that is the verb that is hidden behind the phrase “kingdom of
God.” The verb is “reigning” or “ruling.” What makes a kingdom a kingdom is
that you have a king who reigns and rules. If the king isn’t doing what kings
do in a certain place, then that is not part of that kingdom. So with the
kingdom of God we are talking about the way that God reigns and rules.
There are at least two ways that we can speak about God’s
reigning and ruling. One way is to speak about the way that he is in control
over all things as the Creator. He keeps the oceans and seas in their places.
He keeps the heavenly bodies on their regular and predictable paths. He knows
when one sparrow falls to the earth or one hair falls out of your scalp. There
is nothing whatsoever that does not happen without God being behind it.
Trying to understand what God is like while he does all this
stuff was something that occupied philosophers for many hundreds of years until
recently when people decided that he doesn’t exist. God’s people, unlike the
philosophers, do not try to pry into these things beyond what is proper. Like
St. Paul says in Romans 11: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his
ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his advisor?”
The other way that we can speak about God’s reigning and
ruling is according to what God has spoken to his people through the ages,
beginning with Adam and Eve. Studying nature or mathematics or any other aspect
of creation will not help us understand God’s reigning and ruling in this
second sense of the word. Only the Bible is of service here. Only the Bible
teaches us that all people are born under the reign and rule of the devil
because of original sin. We voluntarily became subject to him when we obeyed
him rather than God. But God promised liberation from the devil’s tyranny. In
the Garden of Eden, God said that the seed of the woman would crush the
serpent’s head. The reign and rule of the devil would be brought to an end, and
the Messiah, the Christ, would rule in his place.
This is exactly what happens when people are baptized. The
devil is renounced with all his works and all his ways. This is similar to the
way that a citizen might renounce his citizenship in a certain country. By
renouncing the devil and all his works and all his ways we are declaring our
desire to no longer live under his rule. Then the Creed is confessed so that we
may know our new king—God himself. Jesus is now to be the Lord of the person who
is baptized, for he has redeemed, purchased, and won the person from all sin,
from death, and from the power of the devil—not with gold or silver—but with
his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Because of what
Jesus has done we are now his own and will live under him in his kingdom in
everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.
This second way of speaking about the kingdom of God is
different from the first. There are a lot of people who believe that God exists
and that he is in charge of all things, but who don’t believe that Jesus is
God, or that God reigns and rules in him. People might be convinced by
philosophy or a study of nature to believe in the existence of God. The only
way that someone can believe in Jesus is by believing the Gospel. The word
“Gospel” means “good news.” God has good news of great joy that is for all
people. Jesus is the Savior who has redeemed us from the devil’s reign and
rule. When we believe in him we will not perish, but have eternal life. By the
proclamation of the truth in Jesus—by the proclamation of the Gospel—God reigns
and rules in his kingdom. He converts sinners from the lies that everybody
otherwise naturally believes.
And so we can see that the kingdom of God, the reigning and
ruling of God, is done using the means of words—specifically the words of the
Gospel. The devil’s power over people is brought to an end by them hearing Good
News. Sinners are adopted as the beloved children of God when they believe the
announcement of the forgiveness of their sins for Jesus’s sake. Those who
believe are in the kingdom of God, because God is reigning and ruling in them through
faith in the Gospel.
This creates a bit of an odd situation as far as kingdoms
are concerned. God’s reigning and ruling is done solely by the means of words,
by speaking. You can’t see words. You also can’t see faith. Earthly kingdoms
are much more visible. The king is visible. His might is visible in the armies
and police that are under his command. If seeing is believing, then there is no
reason to wonder whether an earthly kingdom exists so long as you can see it.
But Jesus, our king, is not yet visible to us. There are no borders and so
there are no maps that can be made of what is Christian or not Christian.
Christians only exist where the Gospel is preached and believed. If the Gospel
is there, then there will be Christians. If the Gospel departs, then there
won’t be Christians.
In our Gospel reading the Pharisees ask Jesus when the
kingdom of God will come. When they ask Jesus this, they are obviously not
talking about the kingdom of God in the first sense that we spoke about where
God is in control of everything. They are asking about the reign and rule of
God that God’s people have been looking forward to since the fall into sin.
They are wondering about the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David. When is it
going to happen that God will set things right again through him?
Jesus responds, “The kingdom of God is not going in a way
you can observe, nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘Look, there it
is!’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
The Pharisees were not expecting such an answer. Even
Jesus’s own disciples and apostles were not expecting this kind of answer about
the kingdom of God. What they were expecting was a kingdom that was quite
visible. They thought that when the Christ came he would assume power and rule
over the territory that God had given to Abraham and his descendants. They
thought that he would be a king like his father David who would be wise and
strong and kick out all the enemies that had ruled over the Jews for so many
years. The Jews to this day are waiting for just such an earthly king to show
up.
When you understand that the people were expecting a Christ
who would sit on a throne and rule over a visible kingdom, then you can
understand why Jesus’s crucifixion was so devastating to his friends and
delightful to his enemies. When Jesus was crucified the disciples were crushed.
They had believed that Jesus was the Christ. Now he’s dead! How can someone who
is dead be king? Are you going to try to prop up his slumped body on a throne? Even
that can’t be done for more than a couple days before corruption really starts
to set in. The disciples believed that they had been terribly mistaken about Jesus.
Jesus’s enemies were delighted for the opposite reason. They believed that they
had been proven right. They had believed that Jesus was an evil doer from the
moment he healed someone on the Sabbath without their say-so. They believed
that he was a blasphemer when he said that he was God’s Son and that God and he
were one. “Now look at him on that cross!” they said with glee. “That will
teach you not to blaspheme!”
Jesus knew that his kingdom would be a kingdom of preaching
and faith. In point of fact, God’s kingdom had always been a kingdom of
preaching and faith. Abel believed. Cain did not. Noah believed. The rest of
the world did not. Abraham believed. Isaac believed. Jacob believed. The
kingdom of God was at work in these people through the Gospel, but if you
looked at them you wouldn’t necessarily be able to see God’s reigning and
ruling. On the outside they did not look any different from anybody else.
The same is true to this very day. God’s reigning and ruling
is hidden from those who do not believe. Consider this place where we gather
together. We have the Gospel here. We have the Sacraments here, which bestow
the Gospel. We have the reigning and ruling of God here unto the forgiveness of
sins and eternal life. But supposed you grabbed some stranger from off the
street and showed him our Divine Service and asked him whether God was reigning
and ruling here. What do you think he would say?
But maybe we don’t even need to be grabbing strangers. Do we
ourselves understand the greatness of the reigning and ruling of God that we
have because of the Word of the Gospel that is given to us? I don’t think so.
It is quite hidden even to us even though we believe. We’re prone to thinking
that the congregation is just a group of people thrown together by history or
happenstance, rather than being a family of God’s children who have been
gathered together in God’s war against the devil. People cannot see this war
just as they cannot see God’s reigning and ruling in the hearts of his people,
but that does not mean that it does not exist.
Jesus warns us against those who would point to a certain
place or to a certain person and say, “Look, here,” or “Look, there,” as though
the kingdom of God came in a visible way that can be observed. If anyone says,
“I am the Christ,” do not believe him. If anyone says, “If you are not under
the authority of the Pope then you are not really a Christian,” do not believe
him. If anyone says, “You have to be a part of such and such a Church or you
cannot be saved,” do not believe him. Salvation is not found in outward associations
and organizations and memberships. The kingdom of God is within you. It’s
faith. St. Paul says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This hiddenness of the kingdom of God will not go on
forever, however. We are entering into the end of the Church year and looking
ahead to the season of Advent. During this time of the Church year we focus on
the end of this world and Christ’s second coming. When that happens our king
will become visible to all people. The Lord himself will come down from
heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the
trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise. This will be
unmistakable and will come all at once. That is why we should not be deceived
by those who say that Christ has come here or come there. Jesus says in our
Gospel reading, “The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning that
flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other side.”
There are a lot of misguided teachers in Christianity who
trouble themselves and their hearers about end times things. It’s as though the
signs of Jesus’s coming were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and they try to put it
all together. This easily grows into an obsession where it becomes the only
thing that is talked about. Weighty matters and edifying instruction are pushed
aside for more exciting talk about the admittedly stupendous things that will
happen at the end.
These folks are quite like the Pharisees in our Gospel
reading who are wondering when the Kingdom of God will come, and they should
take instruction from Jesus’s words, “The kingdom of God is not coming in a
way you can observe, nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘Look, there
it is!’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Until the time when
Christ comes in glory the reign and rule of God takes place through the
preaching of the Gospel to be received by faith. The end of the world is up to
God. He will bring it about. When the time comes nobody will be confused about
whether it is the end or not. In the meantime we have enough to teach and
believe and do. The reign and rule of God is not something we have to wait for.
It is among us now as Jesus faithful dispenses our forgiveness and salvation day
after day, week after week.
No comments:
Post a Comment