The Seed-like Kingdom
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Introduction
Parable: Earthly story with a heavenly meaning
Usually pertaining to salvation
18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
What is the Kingdom?
What is the Kingdom?
You hear a lot about the church/mission/outreach, but you don’t hear a lot about the Kingdom.
Kingdom: God’s active and powerful reign through history, bringing about His purposes through Jesus Christ.
God’s rule and reign over His creation
He exercises His sovereign rule over everything that belongs to Him
Jesus lived a perfect life, was crucified, was buried, and was resurrected.
What did Jesus talk about after His resurrection?
3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
After Jesus’ resurrection, He presented Himself to His disciples for 40 days
Proving He was alive by evidences
But what did he spend the 40 days talking about?
If we hang out for 4 hours and we talk about only one thing, you’d think that thing is pretty important
Now Jesus was dead and is now alive
It’s kind of hard not to give Him your attention
If Jesus only talked about 1 thing for 40 days, we need to take it seriously.
Jesus did not give them
5 Steps to a Healthy Marriage
How to be a Better Apostle
Church planting/mission
Leadership
He talked about the Kingdom of God.
Why didn’t Jesus us the word “church”?
Candid: Churches have expiration dates.
Every church that Paul planted was vibrant, growing, and moving.
If you visit the site of where those churches were, you’d find relics.
Graceland Dearborn, what we are pouring our hearts, prayers, and work in to, will once day cease to exist.
The Kingdom does not have an expiration date
The church is a localized expression of the Kingdom
The church is an outpost/embassy of the Kingdom
God expects everyone who is in the Kingdom, who knows the King, to be part of a Kingdom outpost, a local church.
Response to the Kingdom
Response to the Kingdom
Jesus’s heart is for you to be in the Kingdom
How do we get in the Kingdom?
Jesus begins His ministry by Mark 1:15
15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
The Kingdom is here.
Repentance means to turn away from sin.
Acknowledging that we need the King means that we see that we are helpless without Him.
We turn away from our sins and believe on Christ
We leave behind our old way of living, which is apart from God, and we trust and follow Jesus as Lord and Savior, which ushers us into the Kingdom.
“Jesus is King and I am not. I have sinned against the King. The King graciously and lovingly gave me His life. I’m taken back by the sacrifice of the King. My heart is overwhelmed by the King’s love.”
We yield our lives to Christ the King and He lives with us.
He welcomes us into His Kingdom
He gives us His Spirit, through Whom we are always with the King.
The Kingdom of God is present where the King is found.
This is the Christian testimony
Is this your story?
Has your story been intertwined with the person and work of Jesus Christ?
Does Jesus have His way in your life?
Jesus has this similar conversation with a man named Niccodemus.
Niccodemus was a Pharisee, a teacher of the law, a religious man who believed himself to be right with God based on his obedience from the law
Niccodemus did not understand the Kingdom—There was a disconnect.
Jesus tells him in John 3:3
3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Jesus says the exact same thing to us today.
Unless we are born again, become a new creation, we will not be saved.
Later in John 3, the Bible says
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Jesus uses these hard word for hard realities because He loves us.
Jesus doesn’t pander with us.
Christians don’t do pandering.
You’re either in the Kingdom or your not.
There is no in between
Jesus uses an allegory in Luke 13, a mustard seed.
Jesus is speaking to a culture that views agriculture highly.
The mustard seed appears to be the smallest, insignificant thing
But when it is planted soil, watered, and nurtured by sunlight, it grows into a very large tree.
God’s inginuity is staggering.
The seed planted in the soil sprouts roots
Water nourishes the roots, which give nutrients to the seed, which sprouts a plant.
Then plant extends to the heavens as it grows and is strong.
And what was once a seed smaller than your finger tips now gives shelter to the birds of the air in it’s branches
How should we understand the Kingdom?
It’s like a mustard seed that’s planted in a garden then grows big and strong so that birds come and make nests in it.
It’s unstoppable; beauty; counterintuitive.
Napoleon Bonepart was a great advancer of human liberty.
But he relied heavily on coercion and the sword.
His armies were his security and his strong battalions were the cornerstone of his empire.
Napoleon was no a big man, but through his empire he stood firm.
Yet, where his armies were great, after many wars his empire was overthrown.
My empire has passed away. I founded it upon the sword, and it is gone. Jesus Christ established an empire on love, and it will last forever.
Napoleon
The Kingdom of God was not like Napoleon’s empire or the Roman empire.
It was founded on grace, not gore. Humility, not hatred. His blood, not the blood of His enemies.
Coming into the Kingdom requires a sense of smallness; just like the mustard seed.
Jesus is saying that the Kingdom gets much bigger with this small start.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it fell in one.
Jesus Kingdom was established in eternity and yet it still stands.
Our skills and abilities are insufficient to bring about miracles, but in our humility is where God works.
Impossibilites become realities through faith in the Son of God, who ushers us into the Kingdom of God.
What does this mean for us?
Vision for the Kingdom
Vision for the Kingdom
“We want to see Graceland equip and send out on mission disciple makers who enrich the lives of people where the live, work and play with the message of Jesus.”
Dearborn county is 59.3% lost
29,791 people.
I think we can shift the percentages through Graceland.
I would love to see the number go down to 29k lost people.
That means 791 people are going to be ushered into the Kingdom.
Can you imagine fitting 791 people who love Jesus into this room?
The reason that Graceland Church is coming to Dearborn County is not just to put another church in Dearborn County or to be geographically closer.
That’s a Country Club
Graceland Church is coming to Dearborn County to reach people with the gospel.
We want to love and disciple people
Shepherding, raising up leaders
We also want to have an outward facing posture
We want to see more people come into the Kingdom.
We want to see them rest in the gospel of Christ like a bird rests in the mustard tree.
The Kingdom is so much larger than Graceland.
We want to go to where people are.
That’s pretty audacious, right?
“I’m just one person. I don’t know if I can be a part of something like that. Would God really want to use me?”
Did you know that the largest city movement in the New Testament wasn’t started by anybody famous?
We don’t even know who started it.
19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. 20 But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. 21 And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. 22 The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. 25 So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.
This was the first church planted among the Gentiles
We ought to thank God for “them” because without “them” there wouldn’t be “us.”
“Christian” was not a term of endearment.
Notice how it said that “the disciples were first called Christians”
People were looking at them and said that they were so much like Jesus, they called them those “Jesus people” and it stuck!
Now we call ourselves Christians because of the church at Antioch.
This was the first sending church
They sent out Barnabas and Saul in Acts 13!
None of these people even got a book deal in the New Testament!
They’re a bunch of no bodies! We don’t know their names!
When we get to heaven, we’ll say, “Who’s them!?”
You may not be Paul, Peter, or John
But you can be “them”
What if we, Lord willing, reached a couple hundred people with the gospel?
Then we sent some out to plant another church with the focus of reaching people with the gospel?
And what if we made a habit out of that? Making disciples, planting churches?
What if we sent out 10 church plants from this campus in the future?
How many people could we reach with the gospel if we all participated in the Kingdom like the mustard seed does?
Seemingly small, but through God’s power, mightily.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The gospel is always going somewhere
It’s never ment to stay with you.
Think about a lost person that’s geographically close to you.
1 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.
Paul to Timothy. Timothy to faithful people. Faithful people to other faithful people.
The gospel is always going somewhere.
I’m not talking about other churched people.
I’m talking about unchurched people.
Who is that person that you know that’s lost?
If they were to die today, without the gospel, they will spend an eternity separated from God.
God has sovereignly placed you and me where we live, work, and play so that we might be a fragrance of the Kingdom.
His purposes are always bigger than the nice neighborhood or the rockin’ house
He gave you that house, that job, that passion to reach the people you live, work, and play with
Right now, the message of Christ is going all sorts of places.
If ordinary people, like you and me, will live connected to Jesus on Mission, the % of lostness would change in Dearborn County.
We want a movement of Jesus that we wont be able to explain.
We want people to say, “What is going on at Graceland”
Jesus is just showing off.
We want this church plant to equip and send out on mission disciple makers who enrich the lives of people where the live, work and play with the message of Jesus.”
Why do we want to do this?
There is no expiration on the Kingdom of God
Jesus is worthy of our lives being yielded to Him.
Let’s commit ourselves to the Kingdom of God.