PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

Let’s continue considering the various stages through which the Kingdom of God has to pass, starting with the sin entering the world and culminating with the day when God’s rule will once again be universally re-established. In the beginning God’s order was called into question by man’s sin, and the result was chaos, God, however, instead of crushing this revolt by force, allowed it to pursue its course and consequences, but also put into operation a plan which would one day bring the universe back into harmony with Himself and, at the same time, demonstrate His own eternal love and true character. All of these processes are what is symbolized in the sequences of planting, growth and maturity or fruitfulness. It is this processes that is ongoing that makes it seem as if the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is being elongated! In all these man is involved and at certain point in time man’s sin or weaknesses will be reflected and must be surely taken care of for things to remain true and perfect reflecting only our Lord God Almighty’s eternal love and true character that is to be imbibed by man. In the Old Testament we find a pattern for kingship, giving us an idea of what life can be like when a king and his subjects live together in harmony; recall our king Servant sermon where our Lord Jesus condescends to teach us true service to man. Sadly, however, many of the kings of Israel and Judah were unrighteous and fell far short of God’s ideal. So, through the prophets, God announced that one day the King of the Universe Himself would come into the world to re-establish His kingdom in the hearts of His subjects. Today there is no ‘kingdomness’ in the hearts of our leaders, all they know is themselves with little or no care for the well being of their subjects at heart, a trend that vex the love heart of our Lord God Almighty! All confusion about the kingdom disappears when we consider the orderly progression of teaching in the Old Testament which leads to the fact that the kingdoms of earth, though faint portrayals of heavenly things, were totally inadequate to produce universal peace and happiness. In other words, the way things are currently in the universe cannot produce true universal peace and happiness which is why all the bodies like EU, UN formed by man to uphold universal peace and happiness seem to have failed! At each stage of history in the Old Testament we see events pointing like a signpost to the future telling in types, pictures and illustrations that one day the King of heaven would appear and establish His rule in the hearts and minds of men which will enable them to have the mind, love and character of God in their hearts and thus reflect the ideals of God Almighty in everything that they do on earth hence the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our God Lord Jesus Christ. Now that day has come and the promised kingdom is ours. How wonderful! How truly wonderful!

Last time we talked about kingdoms that are dethroned and concluded that the evidence of these dethroned kingdoms are beginning to be visible everywhere all over the world and today when you join that dethronement of kingdoms with this today’s ‘after that comes the end (the completion), when He delivers over the kingdom to God the Father after rendering inoperative and abolishing every other rule, every authority and power’; meaning that all the rules, authority and power that men are flaunting around everywhere and showcasing are all rendered inoperative and abolished leaving only the rule, authority and power of Christ as the only operative now. The other week we noted that the thought expressed in the word ‘kingdom’ is the rule of God –anywhere; in other words kingdom Biblically means the Rule of God universally. However, before the rule of God is finally re-established throughout the universe it will pass through various stages, and some areas will embrace it first before others. In the beginning, and before sin entered the universe by way of Satan’s rebellion and Adam’s transgression, God ruled over His universe with unhindered authority and power. The downfall of Satan, and Adam’s failure in the Garden of Eden, however, brought about a cataclysmic tear in the universe which has affected every aspect of God’s creation. Cataclysmic means causing sudden and violent upheaval, or used to emphasize the extent of something bad or unwelcome. Sin poured into the earth which has taken its toll on all forms of life, reaching deep into the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The truth is that although God originally set up the universe with Himself as its rightful King, the earth has, by reason of Adam’s sin, become a revolted province. The dominion which God gave man in the beginning in Genesis 1:26 has now passed into the hands of Satan, and God’s great design and desire is to once again bring the earth and its inhabitants into submission, peaceful and agreed co-operation with His rule and reign; reverting dominion back to Adam from the wrong hands of Satan which is why Satan is resisting and revolting deceiving and misleading with so much lies. It is unfortunate that many do not understand what is going on hence they are led astray with lies and deceptions! Despite the rebellion in His universe, God is pursuing an overarching purpose which involves the re-establishment of His kingdom throughout the whole earth by means of the personal intervention of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In order to get a glimpse of God’s plan we must span or browse the ages from the beginning of time to its end, and see that the rule of God, broken in Adam, is to be re-established in Lord Jesus Christ. And for that purpose the King of kings and Lord of lords became the Servant King. And today He seeks/searching for men and women who will work following His example in advancing the re-establishment of God’s rule in the midst of mankind.

Last week I made reference to a commentator who said: ‘…when other things fail maybe we will come round to seeing and practicing the principles …delineated in the Sermon on the Mount.’ Lord Jesus taught about the kingdom frequently and with clarity but, as our verse for today highlights, many fail to understand the teaching, and the devil uses this misunderstanding as an opportunity to draw people further away from God. Are you one of those who misunderstand God’s word? Every person longs to find meaning and purpose. Without this, the different parts of their lives feel like loose ends –compartmentalized. People want a goal, something to aim for, to aspire to, something on which to pin all their hopes, thus they desires and dreams. Many corrupt political systems and ideologies have within them men and women who, in searching to find something on which to build their lives, have hit something upon something which has no real foundations. They are searching for wholeness, but they find and end up only on more brokenness resulting in more hopelessness. They are searching for just society but, in finding justice for some, others are disenfranchised. They trust their leaders, but find the leaders will use their followers’ loyalty to serve their own ends. They are searching for the kingdom of God, but are not aware of it and does not understand how to find it but the owner of the Kingdom has given us His Word to be a guide but why are we not following it to direct our course. Doesn’t this explain the driving forces behind so many of the revolts and campaigns taking place in our world? People are searching for the kingdom of God without being aware that they are doing so. Dare we hope that in the shaking that takes place from generation to generation men and women will come to see that their only hope is to belong to a kingdom that is immovable –the unshakeable kingdom of God?

Do you get that? When you read this in the book of Mark describing what seem to be what is happening in our land, is it surprising that this is exactly what is happening in our midst with our leaders only minding and caring for what belongs to them and keeping us in hunger, lack and oppression, fighting ourselves in a chaotic environment while they and their families lives elsewhere. For weeks we observed that Apostle Paul spoke of the rulers of this world as ‘dethroned Powers’; that Dethronement of Powers is what we are witnessing in our nation today or is it not? The words of our Lord Jesus in today’s text convey a similar thought to us concerning what is happening all over the world with signs of dethroned powers everywhere. The other time we all read and witnessed a demonstration in Great Britain where her people are kicking against their ruling power and it is so everywhere in the world and more is yet to come. The Bible translator James Moffatt renders them that is v42 in this way: ‘You know that the so-called rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them …’ Fancy calling the leaders of the mighty Roman Empire ‘so-called rulers’. Well, the years and the centuries have spoken against the hours, and the so-called rulers and their empire have perished. James Moffat (1870-1944) born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, spent early years in his career as a Pastor in the free Church of Scotland, he single handed translated the entire Scripture: his NT was printed in 1913, followed by OT in 1924 but the complete one volume Moffat Bible was publish in 1926. But notice that Lord Jesus contrasted His small group of disciples with those ‘so-called rulers’: ‘Not so with you.’ as seen in Verse 43 ‘43 But this is not to be so among you; instead, whoever desires to be great among you must be your servant’. What He our Lord Jesus Christ was saying was this: ‘You are called to be rulers (or leaders) too, but unlike the so-called rulers of the Gentiles or what we call nations today you are to be leaders who rule by love’ and not leaders who rule by hate, greed, oppression, divide and rule etc as seen in our society today. Those disciples, who imbibed the right spirit of their Master, have passed on to us thoughts and principles and teachings that have molded, and still mold, civilization. And those who build on those principles and teachings are citizens of a kingdom that can never be shaken. Today can you identify such right spirited people in our midst and can you take note of what they are doing, can you also identify the so-called leaders like our governors, senators, the likes of Asari? Listen to the words of an American commentator given in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the USA: ‘Maybe now those who form our foreign policy will wake up to the reality of old-fashioned diplomacy, integrity, and fairness rather than putting their trust in big armies. In other words, when other things fail maybe we will come round to seeing and practicing the principles and teachings given by a Great Leader many years ago –the Principles delineated in the Sermon on the Mount.’ This commentator saw in the minds of the shaking the need to turn to the principles which belong to an unshakeable kingdom. Today everything that is said in the Scripture and in the Gospel relating to these two types of leaders who are currently struggling to have dominion and control over each other in our society is clearly shown and it is left for us as a reasonable individual to identify who is who and which is real!

Following on from what we said last week, just suppose that Adam and Eve had never sinned and declared their independence (what I call misdirected freedom) from God and–had never spoiled this beautiful earth of God with their erroneous life style bereft of God’s (Holy Spirit) guidance which followed their misdirected freedom just like as we all do today. What if men and women had always done the express Will of God and responded at every stage in life to the leading of their loving heavenly Father’s Holy Spirit indwelling in them? The world would have been a wonderful place where divine character would have grown or developed without discipline, where love would never have been linked with pain through hate, where there would never have been any need for sympathy, hate and all its associated ills would not have had any place in man and the world thus society would have been at peace. But unfortunately that is not the world we know and have now. Something have terribly gone wrong due to man’s gross life errors leading to man’s lack in being a co-creator like his heavenly Father God. Our world is a world that has been affected by sin. In the midst of the chaos that sin produces, however, we find God again at work turning things to good by recreation, and doing so with graciousness that when recognized, takes our breath away leaving us in complete soberness and contriteness of heart and mind in full regretfulness but with a genuine come back Or turning back to God. Never has anyone who has walked the flinty way found Him not to be a source of comfort and consolation whenever they have sincerely called upon Him when in trouble. Synonym to flinty is hardhearted or heartless! And remember: Lord Jesus has Himself suffered in this world of sin, when He bore all our sins thus dying the death our sins ought to have brought to us so that we will be free from the wages of our sin which would have been our sudden death, in fulfillment of God’s word ‘that it is not His will that any should perish or die... Men pierced Him with nails and strung Him up on a cross to die. So God Himself suffered on earth exactly all what we are suffering today making it that there is nothing that we are passing through which He Himself has not passed through or tasted! Tragically, some who are on the flinty path do not know how to turn back to Him. Perhaps rebellion and independence in their hearts prevents them from making a U-turn from the direction of sin. But all who turn away from their sin prone path of life (flinty path) to Him our Lord Jesus Christ always find Him ready to pour His grace into their wounded hearts and transform evil into good on their behalf or do you not know that when God graciously intervenes on your behalf to save you, that what it means is that He transforms evil into good for your stead so that you can live and not die suddenly. A Christian woman who lost her husband in the World Trade Center tragedy said: ‘When the news broke that my husband had been killed, a terrible darkness descended on me. But a hand reached out to me in the darkness (God’s gracious intervention), called my soul back from leaving me, consoled me, pieced me together once again and comforted me and turned my darkness into light again for me. It was rough with work at a carpenter’s bench and pierced with an ancient wound.’ But it turned out all very Beautiful! This is exactly how it has been and how it is with many people and how it shall continue to be until His second coming when sin, the causes of sin and the consequences of sin will be dealt with we will continue to receive our loving gracious Father’s intervention to free us from the sudden death our sin would have brought to us.