The Kingdom Is, and Is To Come

Turn your Bibles to Matthew 16:13. We are at that point in Jesus’ life and ministry where He is gaining attention. People are starting to talk about this carpenter-turned-teacher from the middle of nowhere who is doing all these miracles and going against the Pharisees.

At the back of their minds, perhaps they are all wondering, Could He be the One we’ve been waiting for?

Who do people say the Son of Man is? (v.13)

But that’s not everyone’s first thought.

What do these three suggestions have in common? For one, they were all prophets. Now, in Scripture, prophet does not mean “ person who tells the future.” A biblical prophet is God’s messenger, a person who speaks with God’s voice and authority. When Israel was rebelling against God, God spoke through prophets to expose their sins and call them to repent. Prophets proclaim and reveal the will of God to people in that moment.

Proposal one: John the Baptist. We think of him as the one who baptised Jesus. But he did a lot more than that. In fact, John the Baptist was preaching and baptising people with such power and authority that people thought he might have been the long-awaited king. John quickly dismissed that idea; he clarified that he was only a voice in the wilderness who prepares the way for the true King who comes after him.

Proposal two: Elijah. He is recognised as perhaps the single greatest prophet of the Old Testament. He was the prophet during the reign of Israel’s worst rulers, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He did a lot of the normal prophet stuff—announcing God’s judgment on evil, multiplying the food of a widow’s house, raising dead children back to life—but Elijah was most famous for his contest with the prophets of Baal and Asherah.

Proposal three: Jeremiah.

So, John the Baptist, Elijah, and Jeremiah. All truly great prophets who carried out the will of God and spoke the word of God. But they all pointed away from themselves.

The Revelation of Peter (v. 16)

It’s hard to grasp what this must have meant for Peter. All his life, and for every Jew for five hundred years, they have been waiting. Waiting for God to restore the kingdom of Israel; waiting for a descendant of David to sit upon the throne and usher in an era of peace and prosperity and faithfulness. Waiting through the reigns of twenty kings, some faithful and most unfaithful, and none of them proved to be the one. Waiting through multiple national invasions by Assyria and Babylon and now Rome. Waiting through every famine where Jerusalem fell into chaos and disorder, and parents were forced to eat their own children to stay alive, and still they waited.

Each time a prophet arose and spoke the word of the Lord, they said that God would surely restore the kingdom one day.

Revealed by the Father (v.17)

There’s that word from the Beatitudes: “Blessed”. Why does Jesus call Peter “blessed?” Is this Jesus exclaiming with relief, “Thank you!! FINALLY someone gets it!”

Keys of the Kingdom (v.18)

What are these keys, exactly?

Tell No One (v.20)

Anti-climax, isn’t it?

This is the moment! Peter has finally grasped the truth about Jesus’ identity! Jesus has just made this incredible declaration about the great things that are going to happen because of Peter’s confession! The community of Jesus followers is going to be filled with power to influence heaven and earth! And the next step is…to keep completely quiet about it?

The Early Church

How would you characterise the spirit of the early church?

We know that the early church was a special community.

Acts 2:42-47 sho

What was their motivation?

I think we tend to think of the early church mainly as a church-in-waiting. They knew that Jesus had come to earth to die for our sins and was raised and would one day come again, and all they had to do in the meantime was to follow His commands and hope that they were pure enough to enter heaven when Jesus came again.

That view misses something crucial. The early church wasn’t just waiting for something to happen. The early church believed that something had already happened! When Jesus first came to earth, it was not an advance warning to say “Y’all better shape up, because God is going to judge the world soon! I’m going to die for your sins now, so you better believe while you still can!”

According to the biblical story, the Old Testament prophets were always pointing forward to the time when God would decisively act to rescue and restore His people. And according to the New Testament, that time is when God became a human being and entered the human history. It is no longer a distant future; it is already here.

Do you see how that changes things? The early church was not trying to live holy and righteous lives because they were trying to qualify for heaven at the Second Coming. The early church lived the way they did because they were already living in the kingdom of God!

Our Church

The Kingdom is Already Here

What would it look like if we all recognised that we too already live in the kingdom of heaven? What if we recognised that the kingdom isn’t just something far away that God gives as a reward to those who try hard enough, but that it is already here and accessible to those of us who see it with the eyes of faith?

The Kingdom is Yet To Come