Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: Everyone would like that call from a lawyers office about the long lost uncle or aunt that you never knew that has left you millions in cash or acres of land in their last will and testament.

Its a dream made in the movies…but its far from reality.

Brothers Zsolt and Geza Peladi were homeless in 2009, living in a cave outside Budapest, Hungary, and scavenging junk for a living in Hungary when they learned they had inherited a fortune from a grandmother in Germany.

The siblings were located by charity workers and put in touch with the attorneys who were handling the estate of their maternal grandmother in Baden-Württemberg, The Telegraph reported.

The once-penniless brothers received 4 billion pounds.

Today, that would be equivalent to more than $5 billion in U.S. dollars.

Inheritance in this life can be a great experience, but it can be a deadly one as well.

It often times leads to greed, covetousness and family divisions.

The opportunity to receive an increase in wealth quickly can be a dangerous temptation for greed to fill our hearts.

That shot of wealth quickly vanishes and leads to a hunger for more that is not readily available.

Jesus said:

The Bible makes it abundantly clear that our true treasure is not found on this earth, but instead it comes from above in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

He is our greatest treasure and when he enter into a relationship with him, we are promised something greater than any sum of wealth can grant us on this earth.

Followers of Jesus are called into a restored relationship with God and we become heirs of a heavenly inheritance.

Paul uses the phrase “inherit the kingdom of God” twice in these few verses in 1 Cor 6:9-11.

For us to understand what he is saying, I want us to camp on that phrase this morning.

As we come to understand that phrase, we can see more clearly how important a phrase it is as Paul calls out the sin evident in the church at Corinth.

I. Identifying the Inheritance(9)

To understand this passage clearly, we need to start with understanding some baseline terms that Paul uses here.

We will look at two: Kingdom of God and inheritance

First we will look at Kingdom of God.

There has been alot of discussion about what is the kingdom of God that is mentioned in the Bible.

You can read various authors and come to discover various interpretations.

But when we step back and just look at what the Scriptures say, you come up with some simple truths that help give clarity to our understanding of the Kingdom of God.

A. Two Kingdoms?

A Kingdom is oftentimes thought of as a realm where a king exerts his authority or a people whom the king rules over.

But is that how the bible describes the kingdom of God?

In his book Gospel of the Kingdom, George Eldon Ladd writes,

A kingdom may indeed be a realm over which a sovereign exercises his authority; and it may be the people who belong to that realm and over whom authority is exercised; but these are secondary and derived meanings.

First of all, a kingdom is the authority to rule, the sovereignty of the king.

Ladd, George Eldon.

Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God (p.

19).

Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.

Ladd goes onto to show how the primary Hebrew and Greek word usage for kingdom in the bible actually means the “rule and authority of a king.”

Therefore the kingdom of God is the rule and authority of God over all, not just in a certain moment of space and time, and not over a specific geographic location, and not just his rule over a certain group of people.

Let’s look at a few verses

When we look at the usage of the term “kingdom” which obviously referring to God’s kingdom, in both instances his sovereignty and authority are the primary meaning.

When we seek first the kingdom of God, we are seeking more than inclusion into the populace of that kingdom and its spatial local, we are seeking the rule and reign of God in and over our lives.

Therefore we must confess from Scripture that there is a universal rule and reign of God over all things.

1. TWO KINGDOMS UNDER ONE KING

But when we talk about the kingdom of God, we also are referring to a place and a people and we do so because Scripture speaks in such a way.

This kingdom of God involves a people and a place.

Is God’s kingdom here and now or future, or both?

Let me introduce to you what is the called the TWO KINGDOM view that is a reformed view of God’s universal reign in conjunction with the overall reign of God throughout history.

This view seems to answer the question that I have about God’s reign… how do we connect God’s reign over all things in relation to unbelievers and believers.

The 2K interpretation seems to make that clear to me.

Its components are as follows:

One Universal Reign of God

Gen 1 God reveals his authority and rule over creation with appointing Adam as Vice-regent or King as He calls Adam to “be fruitful, multiply and have dominion over the earth.

The blessings from God of his kingdom was institution of marriage, family, working of the garden.

This was God’s rule over all human beings in his Kingdom with Adam serving as the earthly king under God’s supreme rule.

Adsam was also called to be priest of the garden, whereby pointing people to God’s rule as we worked and kept the garden in its state of holiness.

God intended for his universal sovereign rule to be expressed through humanity in a single earthly kingdom; he intended a perfect union between the cultural and the religious to exist in the garden—Adam was supposed to be the perfect king/priest.

Had Adam succeeded in this responsibility, mankind would have continued to perfectly rule the natural world as mediators of God’s universal rule.

Gen 3 shows us that this kingdom was disrupted by Adam’s failure to accomplish the task set before him.

Therefore sin caused the kingdom to be divided.

These two kingdoms under one reign of God are seen more clearly after the destruction of the world by flood with Noah.

After Noah and his family comes off the ark to a re-created world, God calls them to “be fruitful and multiply” but he does not give them dominion like he did with Adam.

This dominion falls out of the hands of man and instead is retained by God as he establishes his rule and looks forward to the one who would rule in Adam’s place- the Messiah.

Instead, God promises to preserve creation and rule it until the Messiah comes to rule perfectly as priest/king where Adam failed.

This cursed side of the kingdom, or the “common kingdom” represents all unregenerate people on the earth, under God’s rule and being preserved and ruled by him.

One example of this rule of the common kingdom is God’s human institutions that he uses to govern the earth and keep it from total chaos.

Romans 13:1

The other side of the divided kingdom or the second kingdom under God’s universal rule is the redemptive kingdom.

What God is accomplishing through the Messiah is first realized in Gen 12 when God calls Abram to leave his home and be the Father of many nations.

In this redeemed kingdom, God sets forth his love on certain called persons, whom God sets his love upon and who enter that covenant with God by faith.

By faith, Abraham believed and it was accounted to him as righteousness.

Through Abraham, the multitudes from Abraham, representing God’s people in God’s kingdom will be a blessing to the nations.

From this work of God’s sovereignty, he brought forth kings like David to rule as a reflection of his power and goodness, all pointing to the better Adam, God’s Son who would come to triumph where Adam failed.

Jesus Christ, God’s Son obeyed perfectly, triumphed over the temptations of Satan, and gave his life as the perfect atoning sacrifice.

Upon his resurrection, he took his seat in the heavenly realm as the true priest and king of God’s redeemed kingdom.

This is redeemed kingdom established in God’s people of the OT and eventually the church in the NT is all a demonstration of God’s Kingdom actualized in the world existing in the overall reign of God and alongside a common kingdom that is ruled by and preserved by God until the final work of God in his consummation.

Notice the distinction of that redeemed kingdom in Jesus words,

To enter the kingdom of God is to be redeemed by the work of Christ and to enter that kingdom is to enter by faith.

All human beings exist under the rule and reign of God but only those who are chosen by God, given faith to believe and are regenerated by the Holy Spirit exist in redeemed kingdom of God which is visibly represented in the true church today.

1 Corinthians 6:9 (NASB95)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

In our passage today, Paul’s point to the Corinthians is that there is a distinction to those who belong to the kingdom, those who inherit the kingdom of God.

Not all belong and not all inherit this kingdom, which reveals the existence of two kingdoms under God’s reign and as we look forward into this passage, Paul will identify the characteristics of those who do and do not belong to the kingdom of God.

2. A FUTURE KINGDOM REUNIFICATION

Jesus also makes the promise of a future kingdom that is to come.

That return of Jesus Christ upon the earth will be when Jesus will consummate his kingdom that was inaugurated during his first coming.

Jesus stated in Matt 25:31-34

The two kingdoms will become one again as those in the common kingdom will merge with those in the redeemed kingdom as Jesus Christ rules and reigns for all eternity.

Jesus will make a new heaven and earth where is power and authority will be with the redeemed who will dwell in his presence as well as be over those who rejected him who are suffering eternally in hell, separated from Christ.

Hell is just as much a part of the kingdom of God as heaven.

Christ will rule over it all for all eternity as King!

What we wait for then is not that this world will continually grow into a kingdom that honors Christ but one that will violently be recreated to be one kingdom under Christ when Jesus comes again as a warrior to judge the wicked and welcome in his holy ones.

B. The Inheritance of God’s kingdom

Secondly, Paul uses the metaphor of inheritance of God’s Kingdom.

Now that we have studied the meaning of the kingdom of God, now we need to understand what it means to inherit the kingdom of God.

He tells us in v 9 and 10 that the “unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

In the positive, Paul is saying that the righteous will inherit the kingdom of God.

To inherit the kingdom does not mean that believers in Jesus will inherit God’s overall rule and authority because that exists regardless of whether you believe in Him or not.

But Paul is stating the qualifications of belonging to the kingdom of God, the redeemed kingdom as we have learned today.

To belong to that kingdom is to be an heir of God by saving faith in Christ.

This wordage paints a beautiful picture of what God is doing among his people.

Inheritance is a practice of passing down the wealth and riches of loved ones who have died.

This practice of earthly living carries great spiritual truth.

The idea of inheritance actually flows through the OT into the NT as the story of God unfolds.