Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Jesus said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you.”
About 2700 years ago, 700 years before Jesus was born to Mary, there lived a man named Isaiah. God spoke to Isaiah, and Isaiah spoke to the people of Israel.
It was a gloomy time. Based in the area we call Northern Iraq today, the powerful Assyrian Empire had sent its armies to overrun the Northern kingdom of Israel, based at Samaria. Samaria was sacked and most of its people were sent away as slaves, where they lost their identity as Israelites and gradually faded away over the years and decades. Today, we know them as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
But the Assyrians were not ready to stop at Samaria. They sent another army to the south to attack Jerusalem and their commander sent an ultimatum to King Hezekiah of Jerusalem to surrender or be destroyed. Unlike most kings, who ignored what prophets said, Hezekiah sent a message to Isaiah asking him to pray to God for Jerusalem.
And Isaiah prayed. God sent Isaiah a message of hope, which Isaiah delivered to Hezekiah. And so King Hezekiah stood strong and did not surrender. And that night, the Lord sent a plague which killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. The Assyrians returned to Assyria. Such was the power of Jerusalem when its kings listened to the prophets who spoke for God.
Isaiah was given visions of the future. In particular, Isaiah was told of a future new glorious kingdom, a kingdom ruled by a descendent of Jesse, the father of David the great king and grandfather of Solomon, the wisest man who ever ruled.
This new ruler would be righteous and wise. Hear what Isaiah has to say about Him:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
Wisdom, understanding, counsel and might, the knowledge and fear of the Lord. OH, wouldn’t we love to have a governor, a President, a king who had these attributes!
“He will delight in the fear of the Lord.”
What a comment! Can you imagine someone who is so confident of the goodness of God that he or she delights in being fearful of God?
I can. You were that way once with someone. When you were very small, your father or mother or someone else who loved you picked you up and dangled you by your ankles. They threw you up in the air and caught you and you giggled! Here was someone so powerful and so good, someone you trusted and knew loved you! And you delighted in that power! And I bet that when you had your children you picked them up and tossed them around, too. For you loved them and loved to hear them delight in your goodness and play with them. Can you now imagine how God feels when he does wondrous things for us and we delight in those things?
Isaiah spoke of a kingdom of God, a kingdom ruled by a ruler who was absolutely fixed upon what God wanted, and because of this, righteousness and justice and peace and wisdom would be what this kingdom would be known for. And so people began to look for this kingdom and they began to look for this ruler. They called him the Anointed One, because the kings of Israel were not crowned, but anointed with fragrant oil poured over their heads. The Anointed One – in ancient Hebrew, the word was Ma-siah. The Messiah. In Greek, the word translated to Christ. The Christ. In the Latin of Rome, the word was Christus. Other Romans called him the “Salvetor”, which the French changed to “Savior”, a word we use today in English.
The kingdom of God would be ruled by the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior.
And time moved on until about 700 years had passed.
After a hundred years, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. Seventy years after that, Jerusalem was rebuilt. Armies came and went. A man named Alexander the Great brought the Greek language and culture to Jerusalem and Judea, the area around Jerusalem. Hebrew declined in importance – the Aramaic language grew more important. A Greek king named Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the altar of the Temple, the Jews rebelled and once again had their own kingdom under the Maccabee family. Then the irresistible army of the Romans arrived and conquered Greece and Egypt and Judea and everywhere in between. Once again, the Jews were a conquered people, beaten and depressed.
Matthew takes up our story eighty years later after that conquest:
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
Isaiah had spoken of a man who was to come who would announce the Messiah. He would speak in the wilderness and he would tell people to get ready for the Messiah “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
And so John told everyone who would listen that the kingdom of heaven was near. Can you imagine the excitement in those people who yearned to lift their heads up high as equals beside those Roman soldiers?
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
John spoke of Jesus. It was just a few days later that Jesus showed up at the Jordan River and John baptized Him.
But what is this kingdom of heaven? Is it a present thing or is it something to come?
The answer is: Yes.
As we read the scriptures, particularly the Gospels, we see that Jesus often had His mind on the kingdom of heaven. Because almost all Jews had heard Isaiah’s prophecies, Jesus continually referred to the kingdom coming, the kingdom coming near, joining the kingdom, and other phrases. But to understand this, we have to understand better what the ancients thought a kingdom and a king were.
Our view of a kingdom is based on the late medieval concept of a kingdom, which is essentially the same thing that we call a country today. The kingdom of France, the kingdom of England, the kingdom of Spain – these are our ideas of a kingdom. But at the time of Jesus, a kingdom was something with a slightly different idea.
Herod was king of the Jews. He ruled the Jewish kingdom, which consisted geographically of Judea and Galilee. By our modern definition, Herod would have ruled in Jerusalem, but that wasn’t true even though it is the capital of Judea. Herod ruled from Jericho. For you see, a kingdom in those days was composed of an ethnic group, a group of people who identified as one and the same people, like we might today think of the Scottish people, the Amish, or West Virginians.
You know that today, you don’t need to live in West Virginia to be a West Virginian. Someone, born in Clarksburg, can move to North Carolina and live for twenty years and even then, the people in North Carolina will refer to you as a West Virginian, you yourself will be a West Virginian, and when you come back home for a family or class reunion, you will still be a West Virginian. In fact, in some way, your children will be West Virginians, even though they were born in Charlotte. And if someone moves here from New York City, it takes a while before they are considered West Virginians. You can’t be a West Virginian living in West Virginia if you still root for Syracuse over WVU or Marshall! Being a West Virginian is not dependent upon where you live.
That was the way people thought of kingdoms in ancient times. Naturally, most people of one ethnic group lived in a particular area, the way you find most West Virginians living in the state. And so most Jews lived in Judea or Galilee, but Herod was the king of all the Jews – and he wasn’t the king of the Samaritans or the Greeks, even though they might live in Jerusalem or Jericho. And the Roman Emperor ruled over all the kings inside the Empire’s area of control – from Egypt and Turkey to Spain and England.
And so with this in mind, Jesus’ message was incredibly subversive. Jesus was saying to give your loyalty to the kingdom of heaven rather than the kingdom of Herod – or to the empire of Rome.
This kingdom of heaven was initially for the Jews, with Jesus as the head. But soon after his Resurrection and ascent to Heaven, Philip the Evangelist led Samaritans and an Ethiopian to join the kingdom. Peter led the entire household of a Roman soldier to join the kingdom. Paul and Barnabas and Silas and Mark and a host of others began to lead all sorts of Greeks and Romans and other people to join the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven wasn't just for Jews! And then, around the year 230, the kingdom of heaven took over the Empire of Rome as Constantine became the Roman Emperor and made Christianity the preferred religion in the Empire.
Today, the present kingdom of heaven counts some two billion people who claim their first allegiance is to God and Christ, and only secondarily to their earthly rulers. And so, the kingdom of heaven is almost twice the size of China or India and six times the size of the United States.
And inside that kingdom, we see that things are more peaceful, less barbaric, and generally a better place to live than outside that kingdom. It is lands where there are few members of the kingdom of heaven that we see the worst atrocities committed today, the worst justice, beheadings of innocents, executions without trials, the least righteousness in the judges and rulers. Even without Christ’s physical presence on the earth, the Body of Christ, the church, exercises influence over the kingdom.
And yet, Christ has not returned to rule. Yet. And so the present day kingdom of heaven is not as perfect as we'd like.
So we have a future kingdom to look forward to. What we see today is a foretaste, an influence, an appetizer, an anticipation of the kingdom of heaven which is to come when Jesus the Christ returns in glory and power to take personal command of his throne.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Our plan this year is to seek to establish and expand the kingdom of God in individuals and in this community. Our goal is to add 30 new members this year in the Quiet Dell church and 10 new members in the Monroe Chapel church. All of what we have been doing over the last few years has been in preparation, to help each of us understand more and better how to talk to people who are outside the kingdom about how to come into the kingdom. Now, we are ready to work together to grow the kingdom in this area.
You can join that kingdom. Have you joined the kingdom yet? Have you officially joined this church or another church? Have you declared your love of Christ, have you been baptized?
On Christmas Day, which comes on a Sunday this year, we will have a service which will include the opportunity for you to profess your faith, to be baptized, or to officially join this church. Speak to me or leave me a comment if you want to see what that involves. My contact information is posted nearby.
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