The Gospel of the Kingdom
This statement from Matthew’s Gospel seems to constitute a summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus taught, preached and healed. Historically the Church has minimized the importance of Jesus’ earthly ministry. We tend to go from Jesus’ birth at Christmas, to His death and resurrection at Easter, skipping what came in between. Because we skip the ministry of Jesus, we miss the importance of what Jesus preached and what He did as a way of informing the message and life of the Church today. Again, when we want to know what the Church should preach and how it should minister, we tend to skip over the Gospels and go to the book of Acts. It seems to me that this is a critical oversight. The Church is a continuation of the message and ministry of Jesus. If we want to know what Jesus said and did we have to consider the Gospel accounts. Our consideration of these accounts should be more than just historical interest. I am not questioning the historicity of the Gospels, but I do not believe the Gospel writers were only writing down certain facts just for posterity. The Gospel writers were theologians who were showing God at work in everything Jesus was saying and doing.
Jesus preached the Gospel. What is the Gospel? This is a crucial question for anyone interested in Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. The Gospel is literally good news. The first four books of the New Testament Scriptures are called Gospels because these reveal who Jesus is – the very heart of the good news. However, the Gospel writers tell us that Jesus Himself preached the Gospel. Did Jesus simply preach about Himself? When the Gospel is preached today, we usually try to expound the meaning of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection and the saving significance of these events. But Jesus had not died or rose from the dead and He also preached the Gospel. When Jesus did talk about His own death, burial and resurrection, it was mostly to His closest disciples and they did not understand these things until after Jesus had risen. The strange thing about Jesus’ preaching is that He never publically preached that He was the Christ or the Messiah. Some scholars have referred to this interesting omission as the Messianic Secret. Jesus knew that the people had all kinds of expectations for the Christ/Messiah and many of these expectations had nothing to do with why God sent Him into the world, which was to lay down His life. Nothing could distract Jesus from this Divine purpose.
Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. While Jesus did talk about Himself, it seems that the heart of Jesus’ message was about the Kingdom of God and what He was doing to establish this Kingdom, being Himself the chosen and anointed servant of God. In other words, the Kingdom was the main point of Jesus’ public preaching and teaching. (Most of His parables, in fact, were designed to expound some aspect of the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately, the most of the people did not believe in Jesus and therefore the parables also hid the truth about the Kingdom from the disinterested.) To preach is to announce or to declare a message. Jesus was announcing the reality of the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus was not preaching that the Kingdom would come only in the future, but that it was actually here now and He was proof of this reality. Jesus was the King and this meant that the Kingdom had come because He was here. Wherever Jesus is, there is the Kingdom of God. And this is really good news to those who love God and want to be involved in what God is doing in the world. Of course, there were those who would not believe that Jesus was God’s chosen agent and therefore excluded themselves from what God was doing.
The miracles of Jesus validated the message that He preached. Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God had come to earth and that He was the chosen agent of this Kingdom. We should not then be surprised to read in the Gospels that Jesus was constantly performing miracles. Jesus came into a world that was under the dominion of sin, death, and the Devil. So Jesus healed sickness, raised the dead, and cast out the demons! In doing these things, Jesus was demonstrating His authority to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus was taking back what had been under the dominion of sin and Satan. His miracles were signs pointing to the reality of the Kingdom of God. Anyone can say that they are establishing a kingdom. But whoever would establish a kingdom must have authority to do so. A military leader or king who boasted in his power and authority, yet was not able to actually win a battle would immediately be labeled a colossal failure! But Jesus was not a failure in any sense. He not only preached the Kingdom, He demonstrated the power of the Kingdom of God, visibly showing that it had come to earth. And so His preaching of the Kingdom and His miracles worked together to reveal the reality of the Kingdom among men.
As followers of Jesus, our message and actions must be also point to the reality of God’s Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is the will of God being done on earth. God’s Kingdom and God’s will are the same. When we do the will of God, we are confirming that His Kingdom has come and that we are part of it. God has always had a Kingdom. But now it has come to earth in Jesus Christ. Jesus went back to Heaven and has sat down at the Father’s right hand to reign until He comes again. So where is the Kingdom now? The agents of the Kingdom of God today are believers in Christ, who are to do the same kinds of things that Jesus did when He was on earth. We are to preach the Kingdom and demonstrate the reality of that Kingdom. (I believe this would also include healing the sick and casting out demons. There is nothing in the Scripture that would suggest that these things are not possible for believers today.) The Church itself is to be a visible demonstration of the reality of God’s Kingdom, until Jesus comes again in power and glory to consummate His Kingdom. Until His blessed appearing, let us preach the Gospel of the Kingdom!
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