Focus: The Kingdom of God over the Kingdoms of men.
Function: To help people see Jesus' love for the whole world.
Form: Bible Study
Intro:
We wrap up the series of 5 sermons that deal with what it means to follow Jesus, to be like Jesus, to emphasize what we believe was the most important things to Jesus as we walk out our salvation.
All of these things come secondary to finding Jesus as Savior. All of these things come secondary to trusting in Jesus, instead of ourselves for salvation.
Jesus said, “I have come to seek and save the lost.”
This morning's watchword is this:
THE KINGDOM OF GOD COMES FIRST.
(SHOW) In verse 36, when Jesus essentially says “If my Kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting, but my Kingdom is not an human kingdom,” Jesus is saying that Christianity breaks across every single national boundary.
The main reason Brethren left Germany, fled to Switzerland and eventually came to the British Colony, Pennsylvania was because of their desire to be recorded as citizens of God's Kingdom before all human Kingdoms.
The term is Anabaptist. In order to prevent civil religious wars, and to control and register the population, whatever religion the Count of the County you were born in, is the religion you were baptized in as a child.
It was called “The Church Territorial Concept.”
There were Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Reformed Churches scattered across Germany and the most of the rest of Europe.
They were far enough into the Reformation that the perceived abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, its rise to power, and then the necessity of maintaining the institution became more important than doing the work that Jesus called the Church to do had also became the status quo of the Protestant/Reformed Churches.
Let's get that idea: In the book “Reclaiming the Great Commission” a Roman Catholic Priest, who is definably born again, tells us that the biggest problem happens to Christianity when we succeed.
He says, the Church goes through cycles when the culture seems to ignore us, so we work hard at evangelism. We are Missional. But when we succeed, the institution of the church gets so important that we forget mission and switch to maintenance. And this cycle has continued through the ages.
(SHOW) Churches in maintenance mode get more concerned about what they can do for themselves than what they can do for the world that Jesus died to save.
Don't get “maintenance” confused with building maintenance and repair. We are talking about this: How do we keep the mission of Jesus first?
And it is all a part of salvation. When I think of being members of a greater Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. When I realize, and start living like the Kingdom of God comes first, even before my patriotic feelings, I am reminded of one of the great passages about salvation by grace, not by works.
(SHOW) Ephesians 2:8-11 TLB 8Because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ. And even trusting is not of yourselves; it too is a gift from God. 9Salvation is not a reward for the good we have done, so none of us can take any credit for it. 10It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others.
He saved us with the plan of spending our lives helping others.
This is God's word, not mine.
Saved. We ARE saved. But not for ourselves. We are saved to do the Good Works that Jesus did, that Jesus commanded us to do.
In this passage, Jesus is telling Pilate about a greater Kingdom. A Kingdom that is not made by human institution, but a Kingdom God has ordained. It is eternal. And it is much greater than Pilate's Precious Roman empire. It is greater than the Jewish nation that has given Jesus over to the Roman nation so that He could be murdered. It is greater that any kingdom.
In fact, if you read the book of Daniel, he gives a symbolic history of the 4 great human nations.
They are symbolized as this statue of a human with a head of gold, a chest of silver, a belly and thighs made of bronze and legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with clay. It represents Babylon, the Persians, Greece and Rome.
Rome is iron and clay. The hardest of all the metals in this statue. Very Powerful. But the iron is interlaced with hardened clay, something that can be shattered and broken. Pilate's Kingdom is a very strong nation, but easily shattered.
At the end, He speaks of this rock that is cut out of a mountain without human hands. The rock is hurled at the statue and it hits the feet of iron and clay, the clay is shattered and the entire statue comes crashing down and is broking up. It hits the ground with such violent force that the whole thing turns to dust, a wind comes along and blows it away and its place is not recognized anymore.
So much for the Kingdoms of mankind compared to the God's Kingdom of peace, reconciliation and restoration.
It is almost as if Human Kingdoms are built to exclude, to dominate and to war. But God's Kingdom is designed to bring everyone back to Him.
The rock carved out of the mountain becomes a mountain of its own and that mountain represents the Kingdom of God to which Jesus is referring.
As Christians, this is our first allegiance.
And we are still building God's kingdom.
Now, in this post modern age, I prefer the term, family of God.
God's kingdom is also God's family.
And in a family system, it has more to do with who is in, than who is out.
We are in God's family to invite others home to God.
And it isn't about maintenance, it is about mission.
So how does this apply?
Here is an example: When I was working with my mentor, planting a Church in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I worked for a construction company.
My boss' first name was Gene. Gene didn't trust Christians. I had a belt buckle that said: “Jesus Saves.”
Piece by piece, very slowly, as he developed trust with me, Gene began to share with me his painful story.
He was raised in a very devout, protestant, Christian home. He served the US army in Vietnam. He attended a Baptist Church there.
He heart was troubled by the poverty and the plight of the children who were orphaned by the war.
The church was renting a facility. I am sure that the price of the rental was a blessing to the landlord.
But the Church was in a capital campaign to raise money to build a “proper Church” building.
Gene simply asked them if it might be wiser, or more Christlike, to continue renting a facility and use the money to care for the poor who were literally laying in their doorway every morning.
The Pastor told him this: “We are not here to care for the poor, we are here to build a church whereby we can worship God.”
According to Jesus, that Church had abandoned it's mission and sadly, Gene left Christianity all together.
Then one day Gene came to my job site. I was on a scaffolding, three stories in the air. He told me to quickly leave my assistant and jump into the truck with him to help him take care of some emergency. (Can you imagine a construction emergency?) We got about a half a mile from my job site when he pulled the truck off to the side of the road. I noticed that his feet were shaking, his hands were trembling. I looked him in the eye and he was crying. He simply said: “Phil, would God take me back?”
He re-connected with Christ Jesus. And here is the interesting thing. This was long before I was Brethren. I was planting a Charismatic Church.
But it seems that he had been checking out a church that was an offshoot of the Church of the Brethren. These Brethren represented every thing positive against all the negatives that caused him to abandon Christianity 20 years before.
He found a Kingdom that was/is the family of God. A kingdom that transcended human kingdoms and focuses on doing the good works that Jesus called us to do.
At that time, I had never heard of the Brethren. I thought that my boss was involved in some sort of strange sect that wasn't really what I believed Christians should be a part of.
But Gene, was involved in a Church that took seriously these sayings of Jesus: “My Kingdom is not from this world, if it were, my servants would be fighting.”
The Kingdom of God comes first.
Here's the thing:
God loves the entire world, no matter what.
God loves our enemies, no matter what.
Jesus died to save the entire world, not just us.
When I got to Bible College, I was profoundly impressed and upset by the head of missions at the college.
He was a native born Australian. But he had spent almost his entire life in the United States of America. He kept on talking to us about why he decided to continue to serve here with a Green Card instead of changing his nationality.
He kept telling us. He kept drilling into us. He kept pleading with us to remember that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord to the entire world.
This was one of the most conservative, fundamental Bible Colleges in the nation. And he kept on telling us that God's kingdom is much more important than any kingdom of men.
I kept thinking, why wouldn't you want to become a US Citizen? It upset me. But he needed to remind himself what it meant to be a citizen of God's Kingdom first.
When I go back to the image in the vision that Daniel interpreted, the whole point of the Vision is that no matter how great, strong and powerful any nation becomes, we are all subject to the hand of God.
So here is Jesus, in the face of the governor of the Roman Empire, telling Pilate about God's Kingdom and how much more important it is than Rome, or any human kingdom.
That is why those early Brethren fled from Germany to Switzerland to the Pennsylvania. They refused to place the citizenship in human nations above their citizenship in heaven.
There is a theological term for it: “The Two Kingdom Theology.” It goes like this:
Every human is a member of an earthly kingdom. Every believer is a member of a greater, eternal and divine Kingdom. And God's Kingdom is a family that exists to heal the world and bring the world back to Him.
I have a good friend, a pastor in Ephrata PA, Pastor Barry Whisler. Through great expense, they fly the flags of every nation in the world inside their sanctuary.
Because we believe that our Church building, remember the church is the people, not the building, but our Church building is the sanctuary of heaven, we fly no flags.
It isn't a lack of Patriotism, it is an intentional reminder that our first allegiance is to the Kingdom of God.
So when the Anabaptists were re-baptized into believers baptism, the Counts, and political bureaucrats considered their re-baptism as an act of rebellion against the political masters.
They were fined into poverty, imprisoned and even killed under the suspicion of treason.
And it got worse, when they were asked to take up arms in warfare, they realized that as members of God's Kingdom, they couldn't pick up arms against another person who was either a member of God's Kingdom or a potential member.
They used this verse of Scripture: “If our Kingdom is of this world, then we would pick up arms, but since it is an heavenly Kingdom, we refuse to arm ourselves for warfare.”
That too, was considered an act of treason. So they were persecuted and fled to Pennsylvania to live in peace.
So what does all this mean?
Two things:
Is that what Jesus meant when He said, (SHOW) “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
These are not my words. They are Jesus' words. Not that you would, but don't shoot, me, the messenger for repeating them.
Remember, the main point of this message has to do with being in mission instead of in maintenance. It is important for us, that as members of God's Kingdom, we are more concerned with reconciling the world back to God's family than protecting our own comfort and security.
So what does it mean about nationality, and carrying swords instead of plowshares?
We need to remember that when John the Baptist was preaching in the wilderness and the Roman Soldiers believed and wanted to repent, John didn't tell them: “Guit the army. Lay down your swords.” Instead: (SHOW) Soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He told them, "No shakedowns, no blackmail—and be content with your rations." Luke 3:14
When Jesus was giving final instructions to the disciples in the upper room and He was telling them to prepare for the long haul, get an extra coat, extra money, get ready to endure, instead of His earlier command right before He sent them out at the beginning of His ministry to go out with nothing, depend completely on God and come right back and report. He told them to get a sword. Luke 22:35-38.
Is Jesus contradicting Himself? Why did He grab a whip, twice, and drive the people who were making money off of religion from the temple? That was certainly a violent act.
Where is the balance? I want to remind you that moments after telling them to get a sword, when he was telling them to prepare for the long haul, and Simon Peter cut off Malchus' ear, He told Simon, 52-53Jesus said, "Put your sword back where it belongs. All who use swords are destroyed by swords. Don't you realize that I am able right now to call to my Father, and twelve companies—more, if I want them—of fighting angels would be here, battle-ready? Matthew 26:52-52
It isn't a contradiction.
God's emphasis on all of this is that we as Christians live for God's Kingdom, not the kingdoms of Men, or Kingdoms of religious institutions, and not for our own personal kingdom.
That leads us to a second application to this passage.
“The Gospel of the Kingdom” versus “The Doctrine of the Empire.”
In C.S. Lewis' book “The Screwtape Letters,” we read about how easily distracted a Christian can become away from his faith by mere patriotic causes. Both of them bring out passion inside of us because both are important to us.
The problem is in confusing those two issues as if they are the same. Both are good, but one, the Kingdom of God is more important than any kingdom of mankind. It is the believer's first allegiance.
Gospel means “good news.” The coming of God's Kingdom, the invitation back into His family is an healthy, beautiful thing in the life of the believer. It brings us into a family of God that is bigger than we can ever imagine.
The Doctrine of the Empire is different.
The Doctrine of the Empire changes the meaning of some fundamental words in Scripture.
It reduces the meaning of the word “righteous” to merely being “pure” and completely eliminates the bulk of Jesus' teaching that calls Christians to do good works that ensure justice to everyone.
The Pharisees practiced this hypocrisy. Jesus condemned them when He said, you Pharisees are so meticulous in your religious practice that you actually count out the number of dill seeds from your harvest to make sure that you give exactly 10%.
Now, listen, Jesus said the law was not meant to be a burden. God doesn't mind if you had 100 pounds, and you weighed out 10 pounds and gave that as a tithe. But they were so religious that they actually took the time to count them out one by one. They thought this proved to God how faithful they were.
But Jesus condemned them because all the while they did that, they also foreclosed mortgages on unfortunate people, throwing widows and orphans out into the streets. Matthew 25:23-24
And this is what has happened, when we place patriotism over our faith. Patriotism is important, it is even biblical, but God's Kingdom comes first.
And it has played out in terribly unchristian ways: Throughout the history of the Church, the idea that the nation, whether it was England, Germany, Rome, The Dutch, Spain, Portugal decided that it was okay to enslave heathen people, people who weren't followers of Christ because somehow their faith made them pure.
But Jesus' statement is this, our faith will indeed make us just and caring for the least of these.
So James tells it this way, if you have faith, and no good works to go along with it, then you have a dead and meaningless faith.
In our history, right here at Bear Creek, we have played out that role. Bub Erbaugh became a “Cowboy” and boarded a ship with livestock to take across the sea to our former enemies right after WWII. Ivan Patterson's brother allowed himself to be starved nearly to death in order to help medical professionals learn how to revive victims of Nazi death camps.
The Underground railroad ran right through here and our ancestors lost their farms, and some even their lives in order to expand God's Kingdom to the least of these, the brothers and sisters who were breaking the laws of the earthy kingdom in order to give slaves a chance for freedom.
All of these people lived counter to the demands of human kingdoms because they were first and foremost members of God's Kingdom.
So, today we are doing bread and cup communion. But with a twist. The bread that is here is not our traditional Brethren bread. It isn't a loaf of American bread that I purchased this morning on my way in at the Cub Foods bakery.
We have bread from all over the world. As we take the bread and cup, come forward and get your piece of bread and then the deacons will distribute the juice.
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