2004-01-23
Good Morning Cherished Readers,
Last week, I wrote about the story of Christ sending out the seventy-two to go to towns ahead of Him to announce His plan to visit them from LK 10. In verses 8-9, we find the message Christ instructed them to give to the townspeople. “Whenever you go into a town and are made welcome, eat what is set before you, heal the sick in that town, and say to the people there, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.’” Even when the believers Christ sent were not made to feel welcome and He instructed them not to remain there, they were to say, “Even the dust from your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. But remember that the Kingdom of God has come near you” (11)! The Lord leads me to better understand what Christ meant in telling them to say, ‘the Kingdom of God has come near you.”
The first we really hear of these words is from the lips of John the Baptist, Christ’s very own first cousin and the man who was sent to “prepare the way” for our Lord. MT 3: 2, “Turn away from your sins,’ he said, ‘because the Kingdom of heaven is near.’” Those seemingly simple words have huge ramifications which were poorly understood by those who heard them. Even so, the Lord gave enough of those people the faith in them to listen for more such words and ponder over their meaning to them. We know that the water baptism which John practiced helped people take the first step, that of repentance. However, it wasn’t until Christ’s baptism in MT 3: 16-17 that the second step is made clear. “As soon as Jesus was baptized, He came up out of the water. Then heaven was opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and lighting on Him. Then a voice said from heaven, ‘This is My own dear Son, with Whom I am pleased.’” That second step for us is faith in Jesus Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit, known as Spirit baptism. Today, those of us who are maturing in the faith know that our true faith in Jesus Christ brings us eternal life in the Kingdom of God, something to be treasured more than anything else.
Matthew is careful to show Christ’s genealogy through David [MT 1: 1-6]. This is important for more than one reason. The legalistic Jews of Christ’s day needed to have a way to relate to this materially impoverished and spiritually rich Man. They revered Abraham and David and certainly paid attention to one’s lineage. The Lord’s hope is that they would realize that their Messiah would be part of that lineage, as God had said to David in 2 SAM 7: 12-13, “When you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will make one of your sons king and will keep his kingdom strong. He will be the a temple for Me, and I will make sure that his dynasty continues forever.” Of course the son who built the temple was Solomon, but the One Who continues his dynasty forever, is none other than Jesus Christ!
Irving Jensen in his Survey of the New Testament outlines the book of Matthew in a very intriguing way. MT 1: 1-4: 11 is known as the Kings’ presentation-behold Him. MT 4: 12-16: 20 is known as the King’s proclamation-understand Him. MT 16: 21-28: 20 is known as the King’s Passion-follow Him. What superb advice for us all: behold Him, understand Him, and follow Him! When we do this, aren’t we bringing the Kingdom of God near in our lives? Now, when we go back to the Sermon on the Mount, as I would be remiss in not doing, we can see that Christ is giving us a way to carry out beholding, understanding, and following Him. He is telling us in MT 5: 3-12 to know we are spiritually poor without Him, to mourn and expect to be comforted, to be humble and know He will keep His promises, to desire to do what God requires, to be merciful to others, to be pure in heart, to work for peace, to expect persecution, and to expect that we will be rewarded for this kind of faithful obedience. In other places in the Scriptures we are shown that we are also equipped to deal with the persecution that comes from adhering to our faithful carrying out of God’s teaching.
All the while that Christ was repeating this message, “the Kingdom of God is coming near,” He knew that He would be the perfect sacrifice necessary for the salvation of anyone willing to repent and believe in Him. What greater gift could the Father have given us? [see JN 15: 13]. We each need to look back over our lives to the events, ideas, and people that brought us to where we are now in our faith walks. Out of this we will see some pretty amazing things the Father, through Christ, has done. I served on a Cursillo weekend once in which one of the people giving talks had been a prostitute in Las Vegas hooked on drugs and the mother of a child born out of wedlock. How amazing it is that she is just as forgiven and loved by God as someone who has done none of these things, but also come to faith in Him! And yet, there are JN 3: 16 and HE 8: 12 to confirm the truth that the Kingdom is near for any believer. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life...I will forgive their sins and will no longer remember their wrongs.” This former prostitute has a new life, one of service to God which is helping to bring many people to stronger faith or to bring them to where the Holy Spirit can grant them faith they never had. 2 COR 5: 17, “When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, and the new has come.”
PRAYER: O Lord, with our human limitations and our past history of being under the devil’s control, we came to you as “damaged material.” And yet, it was You Who invited us to come to You in faith, and it is You Who loves us enough to have sacrificed Your Son for us on the cross. The damage done to us was by a past life where we had no choice but to sin. We were locked in a prison unable to understand what You meant when You said, “the Kingdom of God is near.” Somehow, You decided to extend the unmerited favor You have given us that we call grace. Today, we come to Your altar to confess our sins and to acknowledge that we are indeed poor in spirit. Only through our faithful obedience to You, can You pull us from the morass of our sin into the light of Your precious, life-giving Word. We are so very grateful to You for having sent Jesus to minister to us and then to die for us. Paul’s words in RO 8: 29 identifying Christ as the “first among many brothers” brings us to an understanding that any suffering we are experiencing for the sake of our obedience to You is worth it. That is because we find that if we endure in our faithful obedience, we too, just as Christ was, will be resurrected-brought back to Your side for a life of eternal bliss. Your Son told us in JN 6: 39-40 that Your purpose was to bring as many of Your children back to You as possible. The same message comes though in COL 1: 20, “Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to Himself. God made peace through His Son’s death on the cross and so brought back to Himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.” Dearest Abba, we dedicate ourselves to being loyal, diligent, obedient, trusting, and joyful in our thanks and praise to You. We laud Your accomplishments and Your wonderful attributes. We thank You for sending Christ to save us and for giving us our faith in Him and the gift of Your Spirit to dwell within us. We ask You to guide and direct us in Your service and in experiencing the joy of Your presence and Your friendship in our lives. We are Your children, and we love You. In Christ, we pray. Amen
There is more to say about Christ’s words, “the Kingdom of God is near.” Therefore, I am led by the Holy Spirit to continue on this urgent and important subject next week. Imagine if we were sitting at the table with Christ at the Last Supper. We would see John leaning near the Savior, His beloved disciple. We would see Peter nearby listening intently to the words Christ was speaking in MT 26: 26-29, [Holding up a piece of bread, offering a prayer of thanks, breaking it, and giving it to His disciples] ,“Take and eat it; this is My body.” Then Christ holds up the cup of wine, saying a prayer of thanks over it, and says, “This is My blood, which seals God’s covenant, My blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will never again drink this wine until the day I drink new wine with you in My Father’s Kingdom.” How blessed we are that we can understand even better than Christ’s disciples did that day what it means when He says, “the Kingdom of God is near.” Our understanding on that is not enough. We must act on it by tightly hanging on to our own faith and encouraging the faith of others. We must pray every time we do a task for God, thankfully asking Him to do what He loves to do best-fill us with the Holy Spirit so we can effectively do His work and be His friend. If my experience is worth anything, I can attest that He will bring each of You the kind of joy He brings me.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn