Living In The Kingdom

Good morning!

As you have probably noticed, there is a wagon on the stage.

These are decorations for something that PDC is doing tonight.

Also, I want to remind you that today is Epiphany Sunday.

This is the day that we recognize that the Wise men visited Jesus.

It is a common misconception that they arrive at this birth, but it was actually much later. We will cover that in more detail in the future.

I am excited about today because we have a lot to do and God has been speaking a lot this week and I am going to get to share some of it with you today.

Before we get to that, I want to take a few moments this morning to have our vote of affirmation on our budget as part of our worship service.

I think I’ve shared this before, but I like to do this during worship, not during announcements because then it feels like an afterthought to me.

This budget represents more than just our finances.

It represents God’s work in and through our church.

The elders and I have asked you to prayerfully consider this budget and if you have done so and affirm that this is God’s desire for us this year, please say Yes.

Are there any here who do not affirm the budget? If so, please say No.

The yes’s have it.

Wonderful!

God has some amazing things in store for us this year and I can’t wait to be a part of His activity!

Next week is our Vision Sunday and today I’m going to begin sharing with you what God has been speaking over the last two weeks about the focus He has for us this year.

Next week we will get into how we will accomplish His goals, but today I want to spend some time talking about the why.

What is our Mission as a church? We talked about this in November.

Leading people to know God.

Undoubtedly you guys have noticed that we’ve been sending people out into ministry, but we have not been bringing any in.

We all know that God is the one that does the work in the hearts of people and ultimately it is up to Him to grow our church.

Everyone agrees with that.

Correct?

But we also know that the way God is going to do that is through you and me.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that all of you have a solid understanding of God’s grace and what it means to abide.

In fact, as I look at and think about our spiritual maturity and how much all of us have grown over the last several years, I am in awe of what God has done in us.

I want you to hear me say this clearly.

Do I have your attention?

I am so proud of you guys...

I mean that and God is too.

I want you to hear that because if you don’t, there is an opportunity for you to walk away from today feeling guilty.

That is the very opposite of what I want to happen.

In my quiet time this week, God has been saying things like this...

No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely upon them, build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives.

Let God alone. In other words, let Him work! Don't stop Him. Don't prevent Him from kindling your heart, from blessing you and leading you out of a common state into that of special longing after Him.

Matthew 5:6 CSB

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Church, we have grown tremendously, but we are far from finished and that makes me excited.

I’m excited because what we experience already is simply amazing.

God has far more for us to experience!

This year...

Knowing God is the only priority.

If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our common-place religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in His presence. The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ. After the amazing delight and liberty of realizing what Jesus Christ does, comes the impenetrable darkness of realizing Who He is.

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year. Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986.

Here’s the thing.

We live in a country and a culture that claims to be Christian.

This is the reality that we live in.

The idea of Faith in Jesus has become commonplace and familiar feeling, but people don’t really know Jesus.

I find it fascinating that Oswald identified this problem in the late 1800s and it is still a problem today.

Think of it this way.

Raise your hand if you like oranges.

These decorations over here are for a service that PDC is doing tonight, but it is handy that it is here.

In this cart Mayra and JJ have put all kinds of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes.

One of the things they have in here are oranges.

If you like oranges, you are probably aware of the fact that there are many different varieties of them.

Can any body name any? Blood, Navel, Tangerine, Clementines, Mandarin...

Why didn’t any of you mention the plastic variety?

I brought one with me today.

I mean, look at this one.

I picked it fresh yesterday… from the shelf at Hobby Lobby.

It is a perfect looking orange.

If you were grabbing a snack, why wouldn’t you pick this one?

Because it isn’t real!

The problem that Oswald is addressing and the thing that God has been telling me for the last few weeks is that most of the people that call themselves followers of Christ aren’t real!

As a culture, we have learned to look the part.

Our faith has become so commonplace that most people believe that no one can tell the difference between real faith and culture.

Just like this orange, we may look the part but that doesn’t do anyone any good.

God has called us to be and do something unique in the world.

Do you remember why God set Israel apart? So that the other nations would know that YWHA was the one true God.

Israel didn’t have the Holy Spirit, but we do.

The problem is that we are content with commonplace.

God is restoring the world right now, in our lifetimes, and instead of joining Him, we often are satisfied with causally watching from a distance.

Here, to make this easier, let’s watch this quick video from the Bible Project, and then I’ll explain.

Heaven is here, not just in the future.

We are living in the Kingdom now, not waiting for it to happen sometime in the future.

Our lives aren’t meant to prepare us for some future place or event.

When Jesus came, he brought the Kingdom of God with him.

Jesus came and fulfilled (emphasis on past tense) the kingdom.

God’s kingdom is here on earth right now.

Listen to what Jesus says.

Mark 1:1 CSB

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

What we are about to hear is what Jesus taught.

If you are going to ask anyone what the “good news” or the “gospel” is, I think we should ask Jesus.

In his gospel, Mark tells us what Jesus said the “good news” is.

Mark 1:14–15 CSB

14 After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God: 15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Do you see what Jesus is saying and what the Bible Project is explaining?

The Kingdom or Heaven, whatever you wish to call it, is not something that will happen.

It is something that IS happening.

Did you notice how they talked about Jesus bringing the Kingdom into the world?

Jesus told the apostles that when the Holy Spirit came, we would have the power to do what He did and much more.

That means that we are called to bring the Kingdom into the world just like Jesus did.

This is why knowing God must be our only priority.

Look at what one of my devotionals from Spurgeon said this week.

He who grows not in the knowledge of Jesus, refuses to be blessed. To know him is “life eternal,” and to advance in the knowledge of him is to increase in happiness. He who does not long to know more of Christ, knows nothing of him yet.

1 Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: Daily Readings. Passmore & Alabaster, 1896.

It is in knowing the person of Jesus that we live in the kingdom.

This is the gospel.

God is in the process of restoring His Kingdom on earth and He intends to use you and I!

I think this may be the disconnect for so many who want to know God, understand grace, and abide but simply don’t.

I think they don’t see that this isn’t preparation for something in the future; it is the kingdom now.

We are missing out on the very thing that Jesus brought.

Do you see what I’m saying?!

When we don’t make the daily decision to abide, we are inadvertently deciding not to live in the Kingdom.

We are saying that living in the broken world is better than living in Heaven.

For most of my life, I was taught to be a fake orange and I got really good at it.

Many of you did as well.

We were delicious looking, but we were hollow on the inside.

Take this one week for example.

God has been speaking and reveling what He plans to do with our little church and if I hadn’t been abiding, I would have missed it all and so would you.

God isn’t asking for us to do something new.

He is asking us to continue to do what He has been saying all along.

Abide in Jesus and enjoy living in the Kingdom.

Spread the person of Jesus, not a cheap imitation.

I heard another pastor say it this way recently. “Don’t be an undercover Christian.”

If you are talking to a friend or a co-worker and they say something like “oh, I didn’t know you were a Christian” you have been doing it wrong!

This came up in one of my readings this week as well.

Matthew 5:14–16 CSB

14 “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

God is endlessly fascinating.

As we learn to live in the Kingdom and share that with others, we are going to know Jesus better and are going to love him more and more.

You’ve heard me say before that we love to talk about the things we love.

It’s natural.

As we learn to live in the Kingdom, we are going to love it and it will be natural for us to talk about it.

This year is going to be a building year for us.

God wants us to grow our church and we need to grow!

You all know that I am not the kind of person that is motivated by numbers, but the reality is that we have been sending people out on a regular basis and we aren’t bringing any in.

We are going to talk more next week about some of the tools that God is giving us to help with this.

However, the primary way that we are going to bring people into the church is by diving deeper into our relationship with God.

We aren’t going to do media campaigns, program overhauls, or anything like that.

We are going to simply live in the Kingdom.

As we know Him, I mean really know Him like Tozer was talking about, we are going to be light in the darkness.

Or as Jesus said, a city on a hill.

We are going to be like those little dots of Heaven that we saw in the video.

God has spoken for our next study to be on Luke’s gospel.

We are going to learn about the person and mission of Jesus.

It is our goal to discover, with fresh eyes, who Jesus is as we study.

We are going to see what it looks like to live in God’s kingdom on earth and we are going to learn how to bring that Kingdom with us everywhere we go.

God has been working for thousands of years to restore His kingdom and how incredible is it that he wants to use you and I?

This morning I want us to take some time to reflect on the reality of what God is saying.

Not only did Jesus live and fulfill the promises that God made to His people thousands of years ago, but He did it by sacrificing Himself for our sake.

As we talk about growing spiritually and growing our church, we need to realize that God is asking us to live like Jesus.

Obviously, we cannot do that in our power.

As we abide, as we live in the Kingdom, we are going to see opportunities to serve like Jesus did.

We are going to see opportunities for us to die to ourselves and live for the sake of others.

We aren’t going to do that because we have to, but because we want to.

My Utmost for His Highest January 8th—Does My Sacrifice Live?

And Abraham built an altar … and bound Isaac his son. Genesis 22:9.

This incident is a picture of the blunder we make in thinking that the final thing God wants of us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, viz., sacrifice our lives. Not ‘I am willing to go to death with Thee,’ but, ‘I am willing to be identified with Thy death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.’ We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes on in our lives. God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, viz., life with Himself.

Luke 22:14–20 CSB

14 When the hour came, he reclined at the table, and the apostles with him. 15 Then he said to them, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you, from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

There is nothing more important in this moment than for all of us to identify with the death of Jesus.

To be in a place spiritually and emotionally where we are willing to sacrifice for the sake of others.

To be like Jesus.

As you come this morning and receive the elements, remember that Jesus sacrificed Himself so that you could live in the Kingdom of God right now.

Make your way down the center isle, receive the bread and the juice and return to your seat.

Wait to partake until everyone has gotten it and I’ll direct you.

Jesus lived and died in order for us to be rejoined with God. We do this to remember his life, death, and Resurrection. We do this so that we can remember what Jesus did and so that we can share with others this amazing thing that God has done.

He is restoring this earth and He is choosing to do it through His creation.

The body of Christ, broken for you.

The blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of your sins.

Amen.

Announcements:

TGP/PDC Calendar

Vision Sunday is next week

Wedding Shower for Paul and Rachel Ellington tonight at Ben and Anna’s 6 pm.