Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 26 – March 1982

 

Has God’s Kingdom Really Come?

 

Sermon by Rev. H. W. Pennings on Luke 17:20-21

Scripture Readings: Mark 7:1-23; Romans 7:7-24

 

Sometimes you meet church members who are as disillusioned about the Church as the Pharisees 2,000 years ago were disillusioned about Jesus.  Sometimes, you see, the party of the Pharisees are seen in a worse light than they ought to be.  We well know, of course, that they were largely responsible for having Jesus crucified.  But we sometimes fail to understand that the Pharisees were more orthodox than any other religious party within Israel!  Were we to put this party into our own generation it would much more likely belong to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod than to the World Council of Churches.  While they had a false expectation about the role of the Messiah and the role of the Kingdom, at least they took Scripture seriously.  They also took Jesus seriously.  But they were disillusioned about Jesus.  In much the same way, and with the same disastrous results, many people today are disillusioned about the Church.  They have high expectations.  But many ask, even if not openly, “Has God’s Kingdom really come?”  In other words, “Is this congregation of which I am a member really a part of the glorious Kingdom we read about in Scripture?  If it is, why are things the way they are?  Why are we so dead?”

Good question!  Many people make false accusations about th0e Church.  But we know that just as many see faults that are real faults…. faults that everyone can notice.  How does this come about?  Even more important, “What can we do about it?”

The Pharisees of old knew that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.  They had also heard John the Baptist say, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  They had heard Jesus say, “I and the Father are one.”  Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sin; He claimed to be God.  Yet they were most disillusioned.  If Jesus was the Messiah, and if the Kingdom of God really had come, why were things still so bad?  For instance, why were God’s people still oppressed by the ungodly?

That is why some of the Pharisees came to Jesus as our text records, and why they asked the questions they asked.  “Rabbi, you have said that you are the One about whom John the Baptist spoke – that in you the Kingdom of God has come.  Why can’t we see it?  Has it really come at all….?

They mocked Jesus by these questions notwithstanding the fact that, at least for some time, they had taken Jesus seriously.  For you cannot be disillusioned about someone whom you never trusted for anything anyway.  What they had expected – uprisings against Rome, processions of victory – had not eventuated and did not appear likely to.

Obviously then, either their expectation and hope was wrongly based, or Jesus was just another false teacher.  From Jesus’ answer it is revealed that the thing amiss with the Pharisees and those who followed them was their expectation of how change takes place.  Jesus tells the Pharisees, “The Kingdom of God does not come visibly” – or – “so that people can immediately see it.”

Two things stand out from Jesus’ answer.  Firstly, that the Kingdom of God does come.  It also comes with signs, even although Jesus replied, “…not visibly…!”  That leads to the second thing that stands out.  They are not immediately observable signs.  The immediate changes which take place in Jesus’ Kingdom are not outward changes, but inner changes.  The Kingdom of God leads first of all to changed lives, for Jesus says to the Pharisees, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

The Kingdom of God, both for those days and our own, certainly leads to change.  But these changes are not of such a nature so that all people say in amazement and awe, “Here it is,” or “There it is…!”  That will only happen when Jesus comes again.  Then our whole world will change, and everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

At the present time, as in Jesus’ day, as in Noah’s day, the majority of people are quite at ease about Jesus and His Kingdom.  And there are even Church members who ask, “Has God’s Kingdom really come?”  These are the people who look for signs and wonders – for outward change – rather than for inner renewal The Pharisees are their forefathers.  They, too, were disillusioned about Jesus.  In these verses Jesus plainly tells us that if we want to see the Kingdom of God and how glorious it is and the changes that come about, we must look first of all at ourselves.  The Pharisees were not willing to do that.  There are people today who are equally unwilling.  Yet the word of Jesus doesn’t change.  Do you want to see the glory of His Kingdom?  “(It) is within you,” Jesus tells you.

This was already an unpopular doctrine 2,000 years ago.  Most people don’t like to be confronted as the Pharisees were confronted.  The Kingdom of God certainly produces new things: new behaviour, and new world-conditions, for example.  But these are the consequence of self-examination and a change of heart.  Earlier Jesus had told a member of the Pharisees party- Nicodemus, who came to Him one night – “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit… You must be born again.  You must be born again.”  That’s where the Kingdom of God starts for us.  There must be an inner change before we can expect to see outward changes.

Because Jesus kept on speaking about the need for man’s inner-renewal, and because He kept on condemning only outward forms of religion, He was eventually nailed to Golgotha’s cross.  But even man’s hatred cannot work against God’s covenant promises and the fulfilment of those promises, for we know that Jesus died and rose again so that we can be born again of the Spirit of God so that the Kingdom of God can be within us in Christ Jesus.

But, by and large, Jesus’ message is still being ignored.  The kingdom of God has come.  Inner change is possible.  But we are living in a world where alcoholics blame society, or their psychological make-up – “that’s the way I am, I can’t help it” – for their excessive and crippling drinking habits.  Many thieves blame the poverty into which they were born, and others the hypocrisy of society, for their stealing.  Sexual perverts put the blame on certain books they have read and certain films they have seen.  Drug-addicts often tell us that it was not their fault that they started their habit.  The alcoholic blames one drink the thief blames one temptation.  And so it goes on.  Yet the only reason why an alcoholic is an alcoholic is because he wants to be one: exceptions are very few.  A thief is a thief because he is too lazy and self-centred to work for the things he needs.  The tax evader, too, enters into tax evasion schemes, because he is really a greedy and self-centred person who cares only for himself and “his own”.  It is, for these people, their chosen way of life.  They do it because they want to do it.  They do it because that is the type of person they really are inwardly.  People nearly always do the things which they really want to do, and are the kind of people they really want to be.  Yet so often the blame is given to another or to society as a whole.

But let us listen again to Jesus from Mark 7.  “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this.  Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him.  Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean’.”

Jesus is saying… “It is not the temptations that come to us that make us sin.  Rather, it is what is inside us – our heart’s desire – that makes us sin.  We do what we want to do.  There are no excuses! “

He continues, “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean’.  For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.”

The reason why the Pharisees could not see that, in Jesus, the Kingdom of God had come, was because they did not want to see it.  They didn’t want to be born again.  Jesus proved so conclusively that He was the Messiah.  All His work and teaching were living proofs.  But they refused to believe in Him: they didn’t want to believe, and didn’t want to have faith like little children.  Because Satan was at work within them, Satan’s work also came out of them.

Yet, brothers and sisters, sinners can receive a new heart from God.  Jesus turns not one away empty-handed who comes to Him to receive forgiveness and a way of life.  God, in His wonderful grace, can turn a thief into one who gives.  By faith in Jesus those who are liars can learn to speak the truth in love, and evil-speaking people can receive the gift of speaking so that others are built up.  God can change the inner man.  He has to.  For, if God does not give us a new heart, we cannot live a new way of life – we cannot really change.  If you come to Jesus confessing that it is you who has to be changed, and you do not come with all sorts of excuses and explanations, He will work with you mightily and make you a new person.  And, out of that new person who has the Kingdom of God within him, can come marvellous deeds of faith and righteousness.  All you have to do is to be honest with yourself and to be honest with God.  For He can work miracles of grace in all our lives.  Our God is a wonderful God.  Do you know that in your heart?  Do you continually pray with the psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”?

Is that your prayer – the prayer of Ps.139?  If you make it your prayer God’s Kingdom is indeed within you, and you will rejoice at God’s glory and grace.

Mind you, even then we do not become completely sinless.  Like the apostle Paul, every day again we will have to say, “I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do… the evil I do not want to do this I keep doing… it is sin living in me that does it.”  But, brothers and sisters, not only is there forgiveness for such sins which we still do on purpose in a way but we have the promise of God that, by His Holy Spirit, He will change us more and more as we mature in faith so that we can become more and more Christlike.  Isn’t that a glorious promise?  Do you have a new heart so that you can accept it in faith and also work at it with God’s help?  If you can answer, “Yes,” you are a rich person, for the Kingdom of God is indeed within you!

Yet there are still so many people within the Church who appear to be as disillusioned about Jesus today as the Pharisees were disillusioned about Him 2,000 years ago.  “Has the Kingdom of God really come?” they ask.  Or, “Why is the Church so dead?”  Or, “Why isn’t the Church doing more and saying less?”

Yes, Jesus’ Kingdom has come already as surely as He will come again.  The Church really is the Church, the body of which Jesus is Himself the Head, the bride of which Jesus is the Bridegroom.  Yet it is equally true that not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord,” is a real and living member of Jesus’ Church, Jesus’ Kingdom which has come.  There are some who may not be able to say, “The Kingdom of God is within me.”

How can we tell?  Jesus Himself gives the answer.  If the Kingdom of God is within us, it is also the work of the King which comes out of us.  For example, why is it the case that some people who are members of the churches rarely, if ever read the Scripture, and rarely, if ever, pray?  There is only one possible answer – it is because they do not have a heart to do these things.  Thieves steal because they want to.  Others slander their neighbours because they want to.  Not because of temptation, which enter from the outside, but because the Lord Jesus Christ does not live in their heart.

Sometimes people say, “I know that I’m a bit hard to get on with, but that’s the way I am.”  That’s true.  But you can change, if you really want to.  You can come to Jesus for a new heart and a new will and a new way of life!  You can be ‘clean’ if you really want to.  Jesus can make you clean.  You can become a new person.  The Kingdom of God has really come.  Just one thing remains to be done.  You have to want that Kingdom – to belong to it and to live for Jesus your King – more than you want anything else.  Is that your real desire?  If it is, two things will happen.

Firstly, you will then be sure that God’s Kingdom has really come, because you will have experienced it.  God’s Kingdom is then within you.  Secondly, you will start to do the works of God’s Kingdom rather than continue to wonder why the Church is so spiritually poor.  And then things really start to happen, both in your own life and in the life of the Church.  They will start to happen because you, in whom Jesus lives, will be doing His glorious work.  The statement of Joshua is as applicable today as it was 3,500 years ago: “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…!”

For, if you really want to serve the Lord, He will give you the strength to do so.  If His Kingdom is within you, it will also come out of you.  God is a God of grace.  He will make you a new person, and make your works new works, if you will just bow down before Him and pray,
            “Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole….
             and I patiently wait…
             come now and within me a new heart create.”

Amen.

Note: after sermon, Psalter Hymnal 379.