Keys to the Kingdom
April 9, 2013 | By Chris Case | No Comments
Jesus spent three years here on earth. During that time, you would think Jesus would spend a lot of time teaching his disciples about how to proclaim the Gospel. That He would have a preaching class and a ‘how to communicate the four spiritual laws’ seminar, etc. But during His three years, He often showed them in vivid images about the Kingdom. He starts with a wedding feast. He shows them what the Kingdom is like. He uses stories to tell of it. He shows them healing, feeding, loving, compassion, forgiveness, and truth. He lived the way of the kingdom. He would demonstrate it. He would proclaim it.
Most of us still view the Gospel as a systematic set of beliefs and doctrines we try to transfer cognitively onto someone else. The word Gospel simply means good news. Its a modifier. Its good news of something else. The gospel is the good news of the Kingdom of God. We tell them the good news of the story of God, and that He is inviting people into the story. Way things are in heaven, He has made a way for those things to come here on earth. As Paul would say, “the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” (1 Cor 4:20)
There a piece of Scripture I’ve often missed in Matthew 16:13-20. When Jusus is talking to Peter about building His church, He turns to Peter and tells him that He (Jesus) will build His church. And what does He give Peter? Not the keys to great conversations, not the keys to winning arguments. Not even the keys to build an amazing church. He gives him the keys to the Kingdom. As if to say, “Peter, be all about the Kingdom. Be a people who are all about the Kingdom. You do that, the whole church thing will follow. I’ll build my church, you worry about the Kingdom.”
Even as Jesus is leaving them, he parts with His disciples saying “I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom.” This thing I’ve been showing you, inviting you into, I am assigning you now with the task of showing it and telling people about it.
How do we do it? We remember the stories. Remember the time the wine ran out? Remember what we did? The 500 gallons we turned into wine and kept the celebration going? Remember Zaccheus? The guy that people ostracized and they chased up the tree? They hated him. Remember how we walked over to the tree and Jesus called him down and we had dinner with him? We protected people that shouldn’t have been protected? We ate with people that people didn’t think we should eat with? Remember what people thought of us? Remember what we did on the Sabbath? Everyone was going to church and doing their religious thing. We stopped and helped people? We did things that were practical. More than rhetoric. We fed and healed with no strings attached. Remember what people said about us. When we saw people who were hungry, we fed them. We should do all those things.
This is why the Kingdom is good news. You demonstrate and proclaim. They will come to you and ask you tell them what they have seen or been experiencing. You should expect people to ask about the hope in you. Not the doctrine. And do so with gentleness and patience. Paul must have known that sharing your faith is a living story and a running conversations. Keep demonstrating. Keep proclaiming.
(Adapted from Hugh Halter, Verge 2013)
Remember Kony 2012? Last I checked, the YouTube video had close to 100 million views. I remember every day logging into my Facebook and someone else had posted something about how we need to stop this guy, how big of an injustice it is, etc. Great! I agree. But it is 2013. Kony is still at large kidnapping children and enlisting them into his army, and the US has more or less forgotten about it. Remember Darfur? How about Haiti? Guess what, these areas are still either war ravaged or poverty stricken. But, we sure were aware that they were in need for a while.
Over the past few months (coming out of Passion 2013), my Facebook has seen a few days where the End It movement has taken up a few spots on my feed. Love the idea. There is injustice in the world taking place. 27 million people are slaves today through the use of child labor, sex trafficking, bondage, and work without wages through coercion. Something must be done. But what? My worry is that awareness, particularly social media trending awareness, has done very little in the past when it comes to young people here in America.
The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict half-built towers. The ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called nominal Christianity. In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent but thin veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable. Their religion is a great soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism. – John Stott
