Kingdom Perspectives

7/26/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Church Update (Finance)

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Church Update

Shannon - Finance Team Update

Opening Prayer:

Loving and merciful God, we confess that we have sought treasures that cannot satisfy. We fail to value Your kingdom above all else. Forgive us, and guide us to walk in Your truth and wisdom. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: Your decrees are wonderful; therefore, our souls keep them.

People: The unfolding of Your words gives light and understanding.

Leader: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.

People: We come to seek the kingdom and its righteousness.

Leader: Come, let us worship the one who calls us into His kingdom.

All: Alleluia! We rejoice in the treasures of God’s grace!

Scripture: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Matthew 13:31–33 NIV

31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” 33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Matthew 13:44–52 NIV

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. 47 “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 49 This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51 “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied. 52 He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

Kingdom Perspectives

Movement 1: Opening

The Kingdom of God is alive.

One of the ways we can tell Jesus is present with us is that His kingdom never stops growing. It grows up, down, and out in all directions. It grows on the inside, too.

The Kingdom of God is valuable.

When we experience a relationship with Jesus, we realize it is worth all we have and all we are, and it's worth putting up with anything to have.

The Kingdom of God is messy.

When the spirit of God moves among us, the work that he does is bigger than we are. And that's okay, because it's God's mess, and he is the one who's going to sort it out at the end.

All of the parables we've been learning about this month have these themes woven among them. The kingdom of God is alive. The kingdom of God is valuable. The kingdom of God is messy.

These aren't random parables strung together. They're not sayings of an exasperated Jesus trying to describe heaven to a bunch of people who have never been there. This is how Jesus taught his disciples to see the Kingdom and to be part of it.

Do you understand this Kingdom Jesus is showing us?

What would a person look like who understood and could hold onto this living, valuable, messy kingdom?

Movement 2: Alive and Growing

God's kingdom is alive, and it's always growing.

Where do you see God's Kingdom alive and growing, both inside and out?

On March 10, 2024, something was planted in our church. That was the Sunday Pastor Bekah introduced us all to "Little Jesus," the little plastic Jesus figurines we have. He was everywhere in the church, and you were excited to see him everywhere in church, and I got to watch you search for him during and after the service. And you all took him home with you. And he didn't stay there either. He went to school with you. He went to the doctor's office. He went to the stores and restaurants. And within a week, we needed more, because he was going everywhere. In the past two years, I cannot tell you how many places I've seen you take him and share him with others, spreading him on to people who have never set foot in our church but were touched by our church coming to them.

That's just our small part of that story. We didn't invent Little Jesus; we are just one branch of a much bigger story of those little plastic figurines. Most of us don't even know where the tiny seed of that idea came from. We're too busy growing and sharing him, with no end in sight.

That is how a mustard seed grows. It begins as a tiny, insignificant seed. But its smallness hides a surprise growth that God brings out of it. That smallness that grows far beyond what we can imagine is how Jesus described the Kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is always growing in the number of people it reaches, and it's also always growing inside us, too. Jesus said God's kingdom is like yeast that gets worked into the dough. On its own, that dough is just flour and water. It sits there—flat, dull, lifeless—until it comes in contact with that yeast, and then suddenly it's alive.

Often, we think of deadly illnesses as contagious, but yeast brings a contagious kind of life that transforms everything it touches. And with just a little bit, it permeates an entire batch of dough, growing it from the inside out.

That growth doesn't come from our talent or knowledge. It's not powered by our strength or success. It comes from a tiny, hidden seed or a small bit of yeast hidden in the dough that holds the kingdom together and keeps it growing.

That is Jesus. Where you see the Kingdom of God alive and growing, you will see Jesus.

Movement 3: Valuable and Worthy

Where do you see the Kingdom of God as incredibly valuable?

The idea of buried treasure is one of the oldest stories we have across cultures worldwide. It's the image that fuels our ideas of luck and also the reward of hard work paying off. But Jesus says the kingdom of God is both of these things at the same time. It is both the thing that we stumble upon unwittingly and the thing we spend our entire lives seeking after. One got lucky. One worked for years. But notice—it didn't matter how they found it. What mattered was what they'd give up to keep it.

Jesus adds an extra note to his parables about the treasure and the pearl, showing that these things are even more valuable than we might imagine. The man who stumbles across the buried treasure in a field doesn't just pick the treasure up and carry it home. No, he goes home, and it says he sells everything and he buys the whole field.

That's a big sacrifice! What would inspire someone to do that? Jesus tells us it is joy. "In his joy", the man went and sold everything to buy that field. Whatever that treasure was, it filled him with joy just seeing it. He had to have it. It was worth giving up all he had and buying everything else around it, giving him a legitimate claim to it.

On the other hand, the merchant who goes shopping for pearls and finds this special one isn't buying everything around it. But he, too, when he seeks and seeks and finally finds this precious pearl, he sells everything and invests it all into this one stone.

If you want to know how much something is worth to someone, you need to find out what they'd be willing to pay for it. And not just pay to have it for a moment, but what they'd be willing to sacrifice to keep it.

Sometimes, as with hidden treasure in this parable, the land it is buried in comes with it. Other times, like with the pearl, it means letting go of everything else, knowing that that pearl is the only thing you're going to have. Jesus says the kingdom of God is like both of these things. It's worth putting up with everything that comes with it. And in the cases when we have to let go of everything else to have it, it's worth that sacrifice as well.

How valuable is the kingdom of God? It is worth all we have and all we are, and it fills us with joy like nothing else.

Movement 4 - Messy and Out of Control

Where do you see God's Kingdom being messy?

Some years back, down in Kentucky, we lived near a really big manmade lake. Someone had decided a long time ago to buy up and then flood out an area filled with fields and homes, all kinds of things, by creating a dam in the river and redirecting the water flow. Now it's a place where lots of people love to go and fish.

Fishing is a big sport in that area. We had a man in our church at the time who liked to fish, and he liked to put together fish fries for the church. When he was doing that, he'd take his boat down by the spillway with a net and end up with an enormous amount of fish. Most of the other fishermen would have called that cheating, but back in Jesus' day, the fishermen would have called that smart. In fact, they all did some version of that, where they took a big net and dragged it through the water to catch as many fish as they possibly could.

The problem they faced was that sometimes you catch a lot of other things too. That means when you pull the net up into the boat or drag the enormous weight onto the shore, you end up spending a lot of time sorting through and throwing out the fish that are unclean, not good to eat, and some of the things that you caught that aren't even fish.

Being part of God's kingdom is work. It's not like going on an amusement ride where you wait your turn in line, get locked in, experience the thrills, chills, and excitement, and then arrive safely back at the end, ready to get in line and do it all over again next week. It's an ongoing work.

As Jesus taught in the first two parables, the kingdom grows, constantly reaches out, and takes new people and new things. As it does that, it's never under our control, and it gets messy. As Jesus pointed out in the third and fourth parables, it fills us with joy, and that joy helps us deal with everything else. It helps us put up with the mess that we can't control. He tells us there's so much good in there; it's worth it—worth waiting to the end.

In this parable of the dragnet, he reminds us that while it's messy today, it will get sorted out in the end—but not by us. That's not our job. Our job is to cast out those nets wide and bring everything to Jesus, and he will sort it out.

Movement 5 - The Scribe and the Family

God's Kingdom is alive and always growing. It is incredibly valuable, filling us with joy. It is also very messy.

Do you understand this?

After teaching all these parables, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them, "Have you understood this?"

Matthew and the other disciples did. They had followed Jesus enough to see and understand the way he described his kingdom. So Jesus told them that they, and anyone who followed him like them, were like scribes who held both old and new treasures in their hands.

Several months ago, I told you that it's important, particularly in Matthew's Gospel, to pay attention to when he talks about Old Testament scriptures being fulfilled. Jesus pointed to the Old Testament in some of his parables earlier in this chapter. But here is where Matthew gives us a picture of what it feels like to be a disciple of Jesus. He shows us a scribe: holding those precious promises and that way of life that God calls us to, but which we cannot live on our own in one hand. In the other hand is Jesus—all that he taught, all that he did, all that he is—fulfilling those old promises. He frees and empowers us to live out those promises, to live out that life that God calls us to. We hold the old and the new. And as disciples of Jesus, we know we hold them together because that's how God always intended them to be.

Scribes are just another name for students. They are people, just like us. We're born into families or adopted in, and those families help us to grow, just like the kingdom of God grows. They help us to grow up and out, and they also help us to grow inside as well, becoming more mature, wiser, and more responsible.

As we grow, there comes a day when we take on responsibility for others. We become a parent, by birth or adoption. We take on work where there are other people under our watch and care, and we begin to see something wonderful—hope, beauty, and goodness in others—the way that someone once saw that in us. We help them grow and find that value. But even as parent figures, we're still growing. We're still someone else's child.

One of the best ways we pass on our faith is by letting our children see that they can trust us as their parents, even as they watch us trust our own parents. All of this points to our faith that ultimately rests in our Heavenly Father. By showing that we are his children, we give them a model of what it looks like to live in a loving relationship with that Heavenly Father. That sounds simple enough, but it's messy. You know it's messy—being in families, raising children, raising adult children, caring for aging parents—that whole spectrum of life with Jesus, where there's always something going on.

We do our best to fill our nets and bring it all to Jesus. Some days we might not be quite as fast or nimble at doing that as others, but we can do it with joy and hope that He's going to sift through, redeem, and sort out all that we bring Him. Because we know He's not just something new coming in to take over the old. He's the answer to all that has come before and the fulfillment of all those promises our hopes rest on.

He will give you joy that will make you want him more, and it will be messy and out of control. But he promises to sort it all out in the end. He is the fulfillment of all we've been promised.

So, what does it look like for you to be a disciple who follows and understands, and lives what Jesus teaches? A grown-up faith that never stops being God's held child. So keep being God's child where others can see.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, Thank you for calling us to follow you. Thank you for growing us as you grow your Kingdom. Help us to see you for the treasure you are to us. Help us to trust you when we don't understand. Help us never lose sight of you or fail to hear your voice as you call us to be children of our Heavenly Father. In Jesus name, Amen.