Sycamore Sermon

The Kingdom

Jon mentioned I work for UPI

We are a discipleship ministry, helping to grow

Teaching and providing opportunities for them to share faith story, their testimony, and help them to articulate the gospel

Jon taught us the gospel a month or so ago, but I wondered, how many of us, retained it, can in turn, share it??

This is a problem, this is a problem with our Christianity

This is problem with our churches, a problem with our Christians

We don’t know the gospel nor can we communicate it, and yet this is exactly what we’ve been called to do,

Peter tells us in his first letter, in chapter 3 of that letter, verse 13

1 Peter 3:15,

you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. NLT

What we have in our churches, what we have in our country, is a bunch of individuals who want to be spoon fed information each week

Pew sitters, who are there for themselves.

Pastor, teach me, help me to understand, help me to deal with this life situation, help me to feel better, etc.

We, you and me, we are neglecting our responsibility as followers of Jesus.

We are all in ministry, we are all ambassadors, we are all witnesses, not just by name, but by action, or at least that’s how Jesus drew it up.

So, what I want to do today, is look at what God has been doing from the beginning

Not just to see it, but to understand it, to know it, so we can tell it.

This matters, what God has been doing from day 1 matters, it clues us in on what He is still doing.

It clues us in on what He wants me to be doing, it clues us in on my role in as a Christian and a member of His body.

So let’s talk Kingdom

This isn’t a word we normally use, or a way in which we, Americans, normally think.

We are not in England, we don’t have a queen or a king for that matter, so we don’t think in terms of kingdoms

But when the Bible was written, kings and kingdoms were all the rage.

So God, uses kingdom language to communicate to them, the original audience, what He’s doing.

Now this idea of Kingdom is a thread that runs throughout the Bible, it begins in Genesis chapter 1 and concludes in Revelation chapter 22

So what is a Kingdom? A kingdom is a realm over which a king has dominion and rule.

So in Genesis 1, God creates a realm over which He clearly has dominion and rule, this is Eden.

God then creates man in His own image, image bearers,

English Standard Version Chapter 1

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

27  So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

But God doesn’t just create man to be just another part of His creation, He does something pretty special

He then appoints them as the rulers over His kingdom on His behalf,

English Standard Version Chapter 1

let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

He gives them dominion, the Bible says, this is the right, the privilege to rule over creation on God’s behalf.

So, God has created a kingdom, that is perfectly suited to mankind, made for them to flourish, to thrive,

And then God gave mankind the responsibility to rule over this kingdom.

So within this first chapter we see something significant, man is satisfied. Why?

Because the 3 deepest needs we have, needs that we have at the soul level are being met.

Acceptance

Significance, and

Security

With God as creator, the One who hand fashioned Adam and Eve, the One who breathed life into the lungs of Adam and Eve, could they be more accepted

With God as the true King but yet gives dominion to Adam and Eve, could they be more significant

With God creating Adam and Eve to be eternal, to live eternally with Him, could they have more security

There is a catch though, or a condition we’ll call it.

Adam and Eve in a sense control their own destiny, they just don’t realize.

The condition is the “other” tree, not the tree of life, but the other tree that is in the midst of the garden.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This tree is the bended knee, it’s the one real way that Adam and Eve can show their love, obedience, submission to the true King of Eden

Adam and Eve didn’t have a sinful nature, we do thanks to them, but they did have autonomy, the ability to self govern, the ability to choose.

Will they continually choose to submit to God’s lone command, continue to bend their knee in allegiance to Him, or will they choose to rebel, to disobey,

Will they have the desire to self govern, to determine right and wrong for themselves, to decide good and evil for themselves??

This isn’t just a simple choice, this is a rejection

A rejection of God as King and rejection of living in a kingdom that God has made

The choice is to be kings and queens of a kingdom they determine

We know their choice, and in the rejection of God’s kingdom, they also rejected their source of acceptance, significance and security.

So what constitutes man’s kingdom? It is a continual struggle to find our meaning in this world, to find our acceptance, significance and security in creation and in or from created things rather than our creator.

What else constitutes man’s kingdom and his rule and reign? It is a world filled with pain, suffering, brokenness, shame and other ills of their kind.

this is the kingdom of man and it has existed since genesis chapter 3.