Last week we focused on the person of John the Baptist. Looking at both his truly miraculous origin and the way in which God prepared this Harold of the King who was to prepare the way of the Lord. Though all babies born are truly an amazing work of God, John the Baptist was truly born in the miraculous circumstances reminiscent of Isaac’s birth to Abraham and Sarah. He was filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb and preached a message of repentance to the people of Israel in order to prepare them for the coming of their Messiah.
His message was repentance, his call was for the people to turn from the ritualized and distorted religion that had taken hold of the Jewish people, to come out into the wilderness and away from the luxury and decadence of the city in order to prepare their desolate hearts. That was his message, but the motivation he called the people to act on was the pronouncement that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.
What is the kingdom of heaven? Matthew uses the term “kingdom of heaven” 32 times and he is the only gospel writer that uses it. Mark, Luke, and John all use “the kingdom of God,” and the reason may largely have to do with the fact that heaven and God were thought of as synonymous. As God is the King of heaven, the idea of using “kingdom of heaven” or “kingdom of God” is referring to the same thing. For several hundred years up to the time of Christ the Jewish people culturally would refrain from using or saying the name of God. They would substitute something in its place.
One of the other common substitutes that the Jewish people would use when referring to God would be “heaven.” We sometimes do the same thing even today when we say things like “heaven smiled down on us,” or something like that. Matthew was primarily writing to a Jewish audience in the second or third decade of the church and so was still working in the mindset of a culturally Jewish person. Either way, I believe that the terms “kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven” are interchangeable in that they are referring to the same kingdom. The kingdom in which the Messiah is going to rule.
Throughout both the Old and New Testament there are a number of seemingly contradictory understandings of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. At some points it is described as currently existing and having always existed and yet others it has a definite historical beginning. It is described in some places as being entirely future, something that has yet to come, while other times it is portrayed as a current reality.
It is described as being universal in scope but also as a local rule on earth. Sometimes it is pictured as directly ruled by God and other times it is presented as being ruled by God through a mediator. In some places it is described as being a kingdom that is established upon God’s sovereign unconditional rule while in other places the kingdom appears to be based on a covenant between God and man with conditions in place.
The kingdom is described as something that only the righteous shall inherit while elsewhere it is said that the children of the kingdom can be cast into hell and that there are those who are currently in it that will be separated like wheat and chaff.
In some places the kingdom is described as something for Israel, yet Christ has also given it to the nations. The kingdom is something established for and among the Jews, and yet all disciples of Christ we are to pray for it to come.
So what is the kingdom of heaven? Is it a paradox we cannot understand? I do not think so. It is a complex issue that winds its way throughout the Bible and the more you study it the more you realize that it is one of the primary themes that ties all of Scripture, both the Old and New Testament together. It is a multifaceted, intricately assembled, and divinely revealed concept which took thousands of years to fully develop, with still more to come. It begins in the creation narrative in Genesis and is the final act played out in the book of Revelation.
There is no way that I could go into all of the details and intricate ways in which this essential theme of Scripture is carried through its pages but I do want to take some time to unfold what I can in order to help you understand the motivation of the people of Israel and of all believers since the time of Christ who have heard the message we looked at last week. The message of John the Baptist and Jesus himself, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
We will first look at the kingdom in the Old Testament and what the prophets and biblical authors said concerning that kingdom. Establishing this will help us to understand what the people that heard John the Baptist and Jesus telling them that the kingdom was at hand understood that kingdom to be. Will then go into the kingdom in the New Testament and how the concept of the kingdom of God was developed with the rejection of the Jewish people of their Messiah.
We have to go all the way to the beginning, and I mean the “in the beginning” beginning because that is where this kingdom idea starts. On the sixth day of creation, God makes man as his image bearer and says over him in 1:26, “and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” And then God commands Adam in verse 28 “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish the sea and over the birds of the sky to read every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The word “rule” is the same word that is used of King’s ruling over there kingdom. This is a picture of God setting up man to reign over the earth as a vice regent in place of the ultimate king. Adam was created from the beginning as the ruler over an earthly kingdom created by God for mankind. But man failed in his kingdom task and when Adam sinned against God the fall interrupted God’s command for mankind to rule over the earth. In God’s promise of the seed of the woman who would come and crush the head of the snake can be seen the implication of the reversal of the fall. One who would come and fulfill the task given to the first Adam.
The means for restoring God’s mediatorial kingdom on earth was developed through 5 covenants over the course of the rest of Scripture. The Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New covenants. The kingdom program was narrowed through Noah in that God would restore the earth, then again with the Abrahamic covenant which guaranteed a seed line involving Abraham and developing the people of Israel. A people who would in turn be the vehicle and the means for blessing all the people groups of the world. This covenant also promised a land for Israel that would serve as the basis for God’s earthly kingdom rule and the example of what God would do for all the nations.
The Mosaic covenant established the physical kingdom of God on earth and the possession of the land of Canaan as its center with the Israelite people. God told the people of Israel that they were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and that they were to draw the peoples of the world to God, growing the influence of the kingdom of God on earth.
The Davidic covenant directly discussed the role of David and his descendants in establishing God’s kingdom on earth, which would bless both Israel and the Gentiles. God introduced to Israel a line of kings through which one would come that would restore the people of Israel after the promised curses of the Mosaic covenant unfolded. And more importantly, a king who would reign over a kingdom that would include all the nations of the world and never end.
Through the years of the decline of the kingdom of Israel and Juda, the prophets took center stage as God’s spokesmen. The majority of what they had to say focused on a rebuke of Israel and Juda’s leaders and the people for turning from God and breaking the Mosaic covenant. They prophesied of the destruction of the land of Israel and the deportation of its people.
In the midst of the prophecies of judgment and destruction, they also promised that there would be restoration of the nation of Israel through the rising of a kingdom under the Messiah in the future. This kingdom would involve the restoration of the Davidic kingdom under the Messiah in Israel and blessings for all the nations under Israel’s king. This restored kingdom would have spiritual requirements since faith and a willing heart to serve God were necessary to enter it, yet this kingdom would include physical and material prosperity for the nation of Israel as well as all the peoples of the world.
As we saw last week, the last two verses spoken by God through his prophets in the Old Testament were a promise of a coming Messiah. The hope of restoration of the nation of Israel as the center of the kingdom of God on earth that was promised to the Jewish people remained unfulfilled at the end of the Old Testament. Only the Messiah could bring the needed spiritual and national deliverance.
Among the Jewish people at the time of Christ’s birth there was a great anticipation concerning the Messiah and the kingdom of God. Part of Gabriel’s revelation to Mary about her son was that he would sit on the throne of David and rule over Israel forever, and that his kingdom would have no end. This is what the Jewish people were expecting in a Messiah, and this was what was being offered to them when John the Baptist began preaching his message, “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The mentality the Jewish people had when they heard John the Baptist say “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” was that of the Messiah coming to restore the nation of Israel and bring in the “Day of the Lord” in which the Messiah would rule in the name of God over the earth from Israel. Matthew has been making the point that the king has come. The first two chapters were all about describing Jesus as that promised King. Yes, the Messiah aspect is part of that, but the focus was on the King, and a king is not a king without a kingdom to rule over.
One thing to notice about the preaching of both John the Baptist and Jesus was that there is no change or correction about what the kingdom is. Since there is no definition or redefinition of the kingdom offered, the kingdom they preached was the same as a kingdom proclaimed by the Old Testament prophets, namely, and earthly kingdom under the Messiah with restored Israel and blessings for the nations. Repentance was the condition for entering this kingdom.
That was the beginning of the message introducing the kingdom. If the Jewish people had repented, if the cities of Israel had not rejected the kingdom message, if the leaders had not committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit by attributing Jesus’s miracles to the power of Satan, if there had not been a wholesale national rejection by the Jewish people of their Messiah, but instead acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, the kingdom would have been realized as they were expecting. Maybe not through military conquest with the subjugation of the Gentiles, but still a restoration of the nation of Israel with the Messiah at its head.
But they rejected him, and because of their rejection the earthly kingdom was postponed until the second coming of Jesus and the nation of Israel and the Jewish people were dispersed with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. We saw this last week in Jesus’s description of who John the Baptist was in Matthew 11. Jesus begins 11:12, “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.”
Had the Jewish people accepted Jesus as the Messiah, then John the Baptist would have fully fulfilled the prophecy of one coming in the power of Elijah preparing the people to enter the kingdom of God. But because they rejected Jesus, they rejected the forerunner, and they rejected the kingdom that was being offered. They did not see the restoration that they were hoping for. They did not see Israel taking its place as the Center for God’s rule on the earth, instead they themselves were rejected, cut off as a nation until the second coming of Jesus.
This is not to say that no one of Jewish descent would be allowed to remain within the people of God. The church began with Jewish believers. But there was a rejection of national Israel as the kingdom of priests and the holy people because of their rejection of their Messiah and instead the church was made to fill that role in this age.
The same church that Paul describes in Ephesians 2 as a new creation, a new man. Made up of those he calls in Romans 9 the “Israel of God,” Jewish people who accepted the truth of Jesus as the Messiah in distinction from those merely born from the physical descendants of Abraham; the new creation that broke down the barriers between Jew and Gentile and created a new body.
Throughout his description of Jesus’s ministry, Matthew emphasizes this kingdom theme more so than the other gospels, though it is prevalent in each. We see Jesus begin to introduce further revelation about how the kingdom of God would develop in this new age under the New covenant.
We see Jesus speaking in Matthew 13 about the “secrets of the kingdom of heaven” and developing the concept of what that kingdom program would look like between the first and second comings through the use of parables. Although the kingdom itself will not be established on earth until Jesus’s return, aspects of the kingdom would begin to exist in the church age. We will go into more detail about those parables as we work our way through the gospel of Matthew, but this kingdom theme and the new understanding that Jesus develops is paramount in the purpose of each of these parables.
Even with the introduction of new information about the kingdom the expectation of the restoration of national Israel and Christ’s ruling on earth remained on the hearts and minds of the disciples all the way to the ascension of Jesus. In Acts 1:6 the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”
Jesus does not rebuke their question, Jesus does not reject the notion that Israel will be restored as the center point of God’s kingdom on the earth, Jesus does not say that the kingdom of God on earth that was promised since the Old Testament was taking a new or unexpected form, he merely tells them in verse seven, “it is not for you to know times or epochs which the father has fixed by his own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and even their most parts of the earth.”
Immediately after this, Luke tells us that he ascended into heaven. We know from the rest of the New Testament that he entered into heaven and began his unending intercession before the father where he serves as our high priest. Though he sits at the right hand of the father as the head of the church, he is not ruling over the earth as was promised. The Davidic throne that he will sit on is still yet to come and we look forward to his second coming where we will reign alongside him over this present earth for a millennium.
Since the ascension of Christ and the foundation of the church at Pentecost, the kingdom of God has entered into an intermediate stage. The New Testament epistles reveal that salvific benefits of the kingdom are applied to the believers in this church age. Christians experience the new covenant blessings of a new heart and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They are positionally transferred into the kingdom of God’s son and experience his righteousness in their lives even now. Paul tells us in Romans 14 that the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
At the same time, Paul explains that faithful endurance by Christians will lead to a future reign in Jesus’s Kingdom with the kingdom itself as our eternal reward. So though believers receive benefits of the kingdom and are functioning as the visual example of the kingdom now, it’s fullness is the reward for those who endure and persevere for God during this present age of trials and persecutions.
The kingdom is in a way both now and future. Call it early entrance benefits. So what is that mean for us now, how are we to exist, to live in this age where the kingdom is both immanent and yet still to come?
First and foremost we are called to come into that kingdom and that begins with repentance. It is a call to recognize that as sinners we are outside that kingdom and without repentance there is no entrance. Repentance is the entrance gate into God’s kingdom and if we try to enter any other way we will be rejected at the throne of God. As Matthew will tell us later, without repentance, no matter what we bring before Jesus, whether it is prophesying, casting out demons or performing miracles, Jesus will say “I never knew you, depart from me you who practice lawlessness.”
Second, we are called to serve in that kingdom. Though the fullness of the kingdom of God has not yet begun, we are still called to service. We are called to serve our king through the consistent and ongoing pursuit of righteousness. Submitting ourselves daily to the Lordship of Jesus and obedience to the commands of our king. We are called to serve our fellow kingdom servants in the building up of the body. We are called to lift each other up both physically and spiritually as we provide for both physical and spiritual needs. Recognizing that we are currently strangers and aliens in a foreign land, we are to submit ourselves to one another in the preparation of our hearts for our eternal home.
As part of our service we are also called to preach to the lost the coming of that kingdom and the repentance that is required for entrance. We are to make disciples of all nations, teaching them all the commands that have been left for us by the king who is preparing his return.
Finally, we are called to look forward to the fullness of that kingdom. We are to pray “your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to eagerly anticipate the earthly reign of Jesus from the Davidic throne in Jerusalem over all the peoples of the world and for the final phase of the kingdom of God when Jesus returns the reign of the earth to the father and he creates a new heaven and a new earth where he will call us to exist with him for eternity.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”