It's a blessing here at the beginning of a day that we're going to be sharing for three messages today. So y'all do please pray for me that we make it through all three of these sessions and my voice holdout and all those things. Today's message is very important. And it's important because this concept of the two kingdoms, if you don't get this, you're not going to get the teachings of Jesus.
And when I was in the army and when it was reading the things that had to do with the two kingdoms that really started to make things click. And here's also one of my concerns. A lot of you have inherited a teaching of standing for non-resistance, but to be honest, I think you're getting there from the wrong direction. You got there in the wrong way.
You were inherited, you got a beautiful heritage, but because you just inherited, and praise God for that, the whole emphasis of what Jesus wants you to be on this earth is not being lived out in its fullness. If you get a hold of this two kingdom concept, you'll take these teachings of Jesus and you'll go forward. Well, I'm going to start with this little story.
I told you during the time when we had to go and become a conscious objector, there's several different obstacles, we said, different people you got to go through. You have to go see a psychologist, you got to go to a chaplain, you got to do your packet, you have to have the trial. Well, the psychologist was one of the most intimidating of the obstacles that we went through. And I thought it was just going to be not much. She was go there.
She was supposed to tell you if you were mentally sane enough to be saying what you're saying. But as I went in, I found that she was really challenging me. And so I walked in this room not this is just a picture, but I walked into the room where the psychologist was there, you know and it was a small little army room. And as I went in there, she said something like, " You're not going to be here very long. I don't think you even need to sit down." So I was like, OK, this is kind of interesting.
And so I said, well, what do you mean? And she said to me, I got you. And I thought, OK, this is going to get kind of serious right from the beginning. So I took it to sit down, and I sat there and I said, OK, what do you mean you got me? She said, I got all of you conscientious objectors. I said, OK, so what do you mean? She said, OK, I'll ask you some questions. And I was kind of shaking in my boots a little bit. And she said, OK, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions.
You say you want to get out of the Army because you don't want to support the Army and what it represents. Is that correct? And I said, well, yes, ma'am, that's correct. And he said, OK, she said, I'll ask you the next question. Do you pay taxes? And I said, well, yes, ma'am, I do. I believe in paying taxes. See, you're done. You're inconsistent. And all of you conscious objectors are inconsistent. And I kind of thought and prayed a little bit there and I said, well, ma'am, can I explain something to you?
And you know I was kind of new in the faith and these types of things. And I said, ma'am, you see, I live by the ways of a book. And that book is the Bible. And I may not understand all these things, but this Bible instructs me to love my enemies and pay my taxes. And that's what I want to do. And from that, she just kind of got upset and went on kind of in a strange way. She started going off to all these different things she does.
Apparently she was some kind of a Christian, and she started saying, " Do you know who I am?" I said, " No, ma'am." And she started going through, she said, " I volunteer for this, I teach Sunday school and that." And she went through all these things she volunteers for, and this does, and she ends up, and I'm not making this up.
And she says, " And I am a card-carrying Methodist." And I thought, " Well, and I shouldn't have done this." But I said, " Could you just repeat all that?" And she got kind of upset with me. And after that, she just sort of dismissed me. But what I realized is that thinking about that interview, that this psychologist had unwittingly hit on a very fundamental dividing line in the understanding of the two kingdoms.
And this dividing line is something that makes the Bible form into something that's used by empires and leaders, or it's something that's used by people who want to follow Christ in a radical way. Now, here's the famous passage. Perhaps the most well-known and often misquoted passage concerning the idea of two kingdoms and our relationship with the two kingdoms comes from that passage in Matthew 22, where the Pharisees are trying to trip up Jesus about who do you pay taxes?
And he has a famous quote where he says, " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar and the things unto God the things that are God." And through the ages, it seems like the church has had difficulty deciding which things go to Caesar and if there's anything left to give to God. But as I begin to look at the early church, I begin to see that they put that dividing line with a pretty decisive stroke. And the idea that when the people have mixed up these two kingdoms, really bad things has happened like this.
You know, when Hitler and all the different emperors before him usually always mix up some sort of a kingdom of God with the kingdom of the state mixed together. Here, this belt buckle that every Nazi soldier went around with says, " Got mitt uns." So you German people, what does that translate to? God with us. And truly, the worst atrocities ever inflicted upon mankind, including today, have often been committed by men who think they do God a service.
So what is the Christian life supposed to be like in the world that we live in? The Bible writers and the Scriptures really talk about it in a very distinct soldiering way. I love this passage in 1 Peter 1:17, and it says, " If you call on the Father who, without respect of person, judges according to every man's work past the time of your sojourning here in fear." Do you see yourself as a soldier in this place? Or do you feel you're part of the world and the empire and all those sorts of things?
You know, I remember being in Germany that one of the things that really spoke to us was you were very separate. Paul also encourages Timothy. He said, " Endure hardness is a good soldier, and be not entangled with the affairs of this life." And the idea of that is that we are so committed and so empowered by the kingdom of God that we're not going to get involved. I remember when we were in Germany, my wife and I lived off base, and we lived amongst the Germans, and we paid German utilities. We lived out there.
But inside, we were very clearly Americans living over there. In those days, we paid our we voted in American elections in those days. Of course, we paid our American taxes and all those things. And the idea of running for Bergermeister of Hoax Spire would have been something that we would have never been involved with because we were clearly Americans. And I believe what Peter is wanting us to be here is to be so clearly a part of the kingdom of God that we're not attached to these things in that way.
And all the biblical writers write this way. We are given our own laws that rule and guide our lives and scriptures here. We have our own king that demands absolute loyalty. We are to refuse to obey laws that contradict the laws of God. Blatantly, we are commanded to love, feed, warm, and care, and even our very enemies of the countries in which we live. We are charged with the impractical marching orders that command us to go into battle defenseless Islams before wolves or sheep before the slaughter.
Explicitly, we are told that our weapons are not to be made of earthly things. They are not carnal, but mighty. Furthermore, we are instructed that we do not war in the flesh. In contrast to the Old Testament marching orders to destroy men's lives, we now instead have new orders to save them. Defeating even death, we are told that dying actually is gain for us in the new covenant, and that the cross is our example. Simply put, we are told that our kingdom is not of this world.
In the end, we are told that we defeat even the Antichrist, but not with bombs and chemical warfare, where it says, " By the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, and by not loving our lives even unto the death." To accomplish this, these goals that the New Testament writers give us and Jesus particularly, to accomplish this, Jesus inaugurated a kingdom that would live out these teachings and manifest His plan for humanity. That's what He wants us to be.
But to be part of this kingdom, to be part of this kingdom, Jesus said that we must be born again. And I know that word has become trite in America. The whole concept of being born again, maybe even you, it wasn't like you heard my testimony, it's sort of a superficial thing, but it's something very important. It means that you are born of the Spirit of God. And if you don't get that, you're not going to get the teachings of Jesus.
He says, as a matter of fact, in John 1:12, how important he says at the very beginning of the Gospel of John, " But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name," watch this now, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. That's a new humanity that fulfills these teachings of Jesus Christ on this earth.
And Jesus said this, and the famous passage that we hear in John that you see quoted on football players, stadiums, and all this type of thing. John 3:16, " Before we get to that, when he was talking to Nicodemus, Jesus answered Nicodemus and said in John 3:3, " Jesus answered and said to him, ' Verily, verily, I say unto thee, ' accept a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Do you get the teachings of Jesus? Do you understand them?
Perhaps the reason why they seem like nonsense to you is that you're not seeing the kingdom of God. And if you don't get it, it could because you are not born again. You must be born of the Spirit and not of the things of this age to understand the teachings of Jesus Christ.
He then went on to say, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." So all these teachings that I'm talking about, you cannot have them unless you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, a new creature. And here's the problem with the way we look at this. So Jesus gave us, He started a new humanity, started a new life, and He wants to express this in this kingdom here on this earth.
And to do this, we've kind of turned in Christianity, though, into this sort of just social club or a good feeling thing, and I just can't wait to get to heaven. And the idea is that sometimes we're looking at the Bible the wrong way. Do you ever take a binoculars and you turn it the wrong way and everything's kind of small instead of big? You ever done that before? Of course you have. Well, it's the same way we look at the Word of God.
If you look at the Word of God the wrong way and read it the wrong way, sometimes something happens. When you read something the wrong way, we end up with the wrong questions. And the problem is, is that with a little work, we actually get the right answers to the wrong question. What is the essence? What is the essence of what we have in Christ? It's to glorify God and to be His people here on earth.
If you're thinking of this whole thing as just your life and the way until you get to heaven, then you're looking at it the wrong way. And I'm going to say something a little bit here to even us from an Anabaptist background. If you're not here from an Anabaptist background, bear with me. But I want to talk about the good things that we do. But I think there's something even in this concept of the two kingdoms that I need to mention. Way back in 1921, I came up with a Garden City confession of faith.
And I agree with the Garden City Confession of Faith. It's a beautiful expression. But the problem is the frame in which the Anabaptist people we put this in. And at the very end, after you go through a very fundamentalist type of explanation of the faith, at the very end, there's an article, what is that? 13, called Restrictions. And this is why I said some of you might believe in non-resistance, but you're getting there the wrong way. Watch this now.
In the articles under restrictions, after he basically explained the faith like any self-respecting Protestant would, Article 14, or what was that? 13 says restrictions, and this is where it tax on praying for the paying taxes, church and state separate, where non-resistant separation from the world, even godly dresses all on here. And that's all looked at as restrictions. Kaufman's doctrine of the Bible did the same thing. At the very end, it talks about these concepts of restrictions.
And I think that that's a problem. And you wonder why your children, or you start losing people in your church later on, because basically we explained ourselves in a theological, fundamentalist way with tacked on restrictions. I don't believe these kingdom teachings are intended to be restrictions. They flow out of a Jesus following faith. And that's what started the movement. In the essence of anabaptism, I love this quote.
Conrad Grebel was writing a letter way back in 1525, right at the beginning of the Anabaptist revival, writing a letter and explaining to his friend what he was going through. And he said these two things, and I think these two things represent what was the impetus that started the Anabaptist revival, and furthermore, what's going to get us revived today. He said these two things writing in the letter. Number one, I believe, this is profound now, I believe the Word of God without a complicated interpretation.
And out of this belief, I speak. Amen? It's simple. The Bible is easy to understand. Let's not try to turn it into something that it's not. And then he said this very profound statement. The teaching of the Lord has been given for the purpose of being put into practice. Amen. It was a Jesus following people right from the very beginning. Jesus gave us this concept of the kingdom, and I love this quote by John D. Martin. He always says this. He says, " This is what it's supposed to look like.
This is why he gave us the church. This is why he gave us the kingdom." He says, " To demonstrate to the world around us what the whole world would look like if we would only obey the king." That's it. That's the essence. And this concept of the kingdom, it's funny, it doesn't get talked about, and I'm excited that people are beginning to talk about it a little more. Through ages, sometimes a heretic group will get a hold of it, and then people will be shyed away from it.
And I think that's happened to us as a people as well. But it's the most common topic that Jesus talked about. The Zondrvin Encyclopedia says this. It says, " The word kingdom is found 55 times in Matthew, 20 times in Mark, 46 times in Luke, and five times in John." In total, if you take about the ones that don't have the right context, about 80 times. These statistics show the great importance of the concept and the teachings of Jesus.
There can therefore be little doubt that the phrase " the kingdom of God" expresses the main theme of his teachings. Do we get that today? And if you look at, again, the Bible as just something you read and you want to live your American life and have some nice spiritual meditations and go to heaven when you die. That's beautiful. I can't wait to be in heaven with my Lord and worship with Him, but He wants us a lot more than that.
He wants there to be a people of God on this earth that glorifies His name by expressing His cure for humanity today. So here's some of the way I've seen this in the Scriptures. I think one of the biggest places where the line between the kingdom is graphically demonstrated is shortly before the crucifixion. It's quite a scene. And Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate and Pontius Pilate had heard people calling him the king. And so you know the story.
And Pontius Pilate heard him and he said, " Are you the king of the Jews?" Maybe kind of I take it almost tauntingly, you know that kind of thing. And Jesus took it seriously and said, " Are you speaking for yourself about this or did others tell you this concerning me?" He was like, " Did you get this from God? You know, did you get this from my Father?" And then Jesus made it very clear to him. He said, " My kingdom is not of this world." And that word " world" is not just a geographic planetary structure.
It's the ages, the eon. I'm not of this current establishment. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now, my kingdom is not from here. Pilate therefore said, and this is what we do. And you may be doing this too. Well, are you a king then? It's almost like, well, does that even count? OK, so you're not really a king? You don't have an actual palace somewhere. Are you even a king then?
And that's kind of the way, if you admit it or not, the way perhaps you're looking at the kingship of Jesus Christ. It's sort of a mental trip for you. It's not a reality. Are you even a king then? Jesus answered very seriously. You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born. And for this cause I came into the world to proclaim the truth. For this cause I was born. So if it's in this realm, so how do we look at this concept of this kingdom that Jesus came to establish? How do we look at that?
And it's interesting, some more of the words of Jesus. You know, in the Lord's Prayer, we all know the Lord's Prayer, hopefully. And in the Lord's Prayer, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus put it that this is the kind of thing that we're supposed to be asking from God. So you could say with me, " Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." Then he says this, " Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." So he's asking that this concept of Father, what you have in heaven, the reality, the beauty, the worship, those things that you have in heaven, we are to pray and to establish those things here on this earth. And that's the concept of the two kingdoms. And it's in this perspective that you have to read the words of Jesus. Otherwise, it kind of doesn't make sense unless you understand that He wants you to live this out in a reality here on this earth.
He says in the Kingdom of He says in the Sermon on the Mount, he wanted to make it very clear. So I'll put it on a billboard here. What's the priority? Are you taking it a little too far? Well, what perspective did Jesus give it? He said, " Seek first the kingdom of God." And so in your lives, the things that you're choosing to do, your careers, whatever it is, seek first the kingdom of God.
Interesting, even after Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and as a resurrected body, we go into the book of Acts and we start reading His ministry amongst the disciples there. It even says there in the beginning of the Book of Acts, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs being seen of them 40 days and speaking the things pertaining the kingdom of God.
So even the resurrected Jesus, the importance, you've only got 40 days, you're with the disciples, you're resurrected, and the things that he discussed were the things concerning the kingdom of God. He also mentions that this idea, this dream for humanity that the Lord wants to give to us was something from the very beginning. When he talks about the last judgment in Matthew 25, a little clue comes out there.
He says in Matthew 25:34, " Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, ' Come you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." This was in God's plan from the very beginning. So if I could sum it up, it's something like this. He came and presented it repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And in that concept of the kingdom, in the beginning, as we see God's plan for everything, in the beginning, the kingdom was a garden, the garden of Eden.
In the end, it shall be from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. But for now, it is us, the church, representing God's way here on Earth. So how are we supposed to be? I want you to imagine how it's supposed to be, how the millennium will be, how the living in heaven or however you see those things, living in heaven, he wants that kingdom come and God's will on earth as it is in heaven, we are supposed to be what is to become. That's what we are supposed to establish, as John D.
Martin again says, to show the whole world what the world should look like if everybody would follow the king. That's what it's supposed to be. All right, so at the end of the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul as he goes through all of his journeys, we get this interesting thing on just I think it's the last verse, perhaps, or close to it, at the very end of the book of Acts. And even at then, he tells us what he's doing and what he's talking about during all this time. And it's interesting.
In Acts 28:23, it says, " And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God." And this is what he did, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets from morning until evening. That's incredible. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that clue. I'm not going to go preaching from morning till evening, or you'll get upset with me. But I do want to say, well, what was he talking about?
What was Paul there in the end of the book of Acts? What was he going through the Scriptures and expounding the kingdom of God through the law of Moses and through the prophets and through the Bible, showing them what has now finally happened with the birth of the church. What did he do? And so I'm going to just do a quick summary, not from morning to evening like Paul did, but go through here now and just look at some of those basics of those things of the kingdom and God's plan for humanity. Let's look at them.
You know at the beginning, the Garden of Eden, there was two trees, two trees in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Here's a scripture in Genesis 2:9, " And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to His sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." These trees, that tree of life, is some sort of grace given presence of God.
We even see it coming up several times through the Scriptures, that in filling power of God, we even see it in Revelation in heaven. In Revelation 2:7, it says, " He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit seth unto the churches." And please hear what he is saying to the churches. He says, " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God." God has this plan and still has it in heaven.
It's interesting, a sermon by Spurgeon mentions that he gave an analogy that the tree of life is Christ in the Old Testament. It's that grace-filled life and living by the power of that grace-filled life. But there was another tree, and the other tree was the knowledge of good and evil. If you think about it, what's the knowledge of good and evil? So the knowledge of things you're supposed to do and the things you're supposed not to do.
And if you remember what God rebuked Adam when he first went Adam found out that he was naked and he hid from God, what was it that God actually challenged Adam? What did he say? When Adam said, " Well, I'm naked," he didn't say, " No, you're not." He said, " Who told you you were naked?" There was something about the way he received his knowledge that was an abomination to God.
And this taking of this way of living by the law, and I don't mean that in the way we kind of make that in conservative circles, and it gets all garbage. But just talking about the way the earth, the whole world lives, by law and the fear of law with the sword and the fear of punishment, is the way the whole world lives. And it's kind of not God's plan. And it was so serious. Do you remember when the angels kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden? They had to put an angel there to prevent them from coming back.
And he said, " Because what would happen if they now partook of the Tree of Knowledge, I mean, of the Tree of Life and lived forever." There was something so unthinkable about mixing those two things together that they had to set a guard in front of the Garden of Eden. So this concept of law and fear of punishment had to rule man who lived without grace. And it says here in Genesis 4:15, " And the Lord said unto him, ' Therefore, whoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
And the Lord said a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." So there had to be a punishment based upon a fear of the sword to keep people in line. And this went on. And then it's interesting, Peter Riddenman, an early Anabaptist, has a quote about this whole concept, and I agree with what he says. I think it's a profound quote. He says, " Since people did not want to let themselves be led by the Spirit of the Lord, God had to use a different rod to protect them from harm.
This was done so that the land would not be completely polluted with blood-guilty people, and so that he would not have to destroy the whole world on their account. The world could thus be preserved until the time of the promised offspring in whom all things would be made right. Excellent quote. This idea that God still governs His people. We're going to talk this in the next session as well. But through this, we see Him working through the people of God and through the people of the world.
And you see this longing for Him to express His ways through the people of God continually. Here's some. In Genesis 6:5, when we get to the time of Noah, in Genesis 6:5, and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And Noah, his people, his family there that he wanted to bless. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation, and Noah walked with God.
And here's what he did. So in the midst of this chaos and sin and disaster, God established His name and His people on this people in a boat. And He says to him in Genesis 6:18, " But with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee." He wanted to establish. And God's desire is to write His name, Jehovah, over a people that will glorify Him. You've got to get that if you're going to understand the teachings of Jesus.
And it goes on. But after that, even He established still a living in the law for man's sake, the imaginations of man's hard are evil from his youth. And he said a law, whosoever shedth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. But he went on, and through the different ages, we see God representing his desire of a covenant people. And Abraham was a beautiful example. And he said to Abraham in Genesis 12, " And I will make of thee a great nation." You get that?
A nation, a people of God. " And I will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curses thee; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." The whole idea of the covenant people of God would bring a blessing to the whole earth, and God wanted Abraham to be that. You see it coming out in Exodus 19.
Exodus 19 is right when the people left Egypt because of the Passover, and 50 days later, they're now in front of the mountain and it's starting to quake. Well, what happens 50 days after Easter? Pentecost. It's not a coincidence that this statement was now written on Pentecost. He's got the gathered people of God together, and God says this to the chosen people there. He says, " You have seen what I did unto the Egyptian and how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. And that whole concept of being His chosen people, that the people of God, a peculiar people that do things differently than the rest of the world glorifies God. And that's what He wants us to be.
And it kept coming through. He kept putting these things through. But when was the first time in the Bible that people when was the first time in the Bible that people asked for a king? When the people of God asked for a king? When do you think the first time was? Anybody know? A lot of people say it was Saul. There's an interesting story when it happened with actually Gideon. After the famous Gideon scene where he came and won the success with the lanterns and everything and the few people, you know the story.
And it was such an incredible victory for the people of God that they wanted to make Gideon King. But there's a little story tucked away in your Book of Judges that I don't want you to miss, that you've got to hear. Because they went to Gideon and they said, " The men of Israel said into Gideon, ' Rule thou over us. Be thou and over us, both thou and thy son and thy son, son also. For thou have delivered us from the hand of Midian." But Gideon said this is not going to be the way it is.
And Gideon said unto them, " I will not rule over you. Neither shall my sons roll over you. The Lord shall rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you." And so this concept of the idea of being a people of God and even mixing that with kings and nations, even in the time of judges, when God was trying to have this or wanting to have this covenant people with the people of God here, even then to mixing this with the kings was something that just wasn't right. They had a special purpose, a peculiar people.
And that's what you're supposed to have as the kingdom today, a treasure that's different than the rest of this world. And there's a parable that goes out. Now, after Gideon died, they thought that some of the sons thought, " Hey, this is not a bad idea." And Abimelech was then made king. Well, Jonathan learned of this, and he went out on top of this mountain and rebuked the people in Judges chapter 9.
And there's a precious parable that doesn't get preached enough about what happened and how we as a people of God are supposed to have something special that doesn't taint it with the ruling of nations and things like that. And here's the way the parable goes. It's a great parable. It says in Judges chapter nine, verse eight, " Some trees went out to anoint themselves a king. They wanted to make themselves a king." So first they came, first they came into the olive tree.
And they said into the olive tree, " Why don't you be our king?" But it's interesting, the olive tree said, " Am I going to give up my oil, the blessing that I have, the special treasure of my oil, which honors God and men to be promoted as a king, I can't do that." So they said, " Okay." So they came into the fig tree, and they came into the fig tree and said, " Okay, you then, could you come and be our king?" And Jotham's screaming this from the mountain, rebuking them with this parable.
And the olive tree, excuse me, the fig tree said, " Am I going to give up my sweetness to come and be promoted over you? I can't do it." So they said they couldn't do it. All right, so they came into a vine, and they said, " Okay, you come and be our king." And he said, " Am I going to give up my wine which cheers both God and man to be promoted over you? I'm not going to do it." And he wouldn't be a king. But they did find a king. They found this Briar brush, the bramble brush.
And they went to him and they said, OK, well, then you be our king. And he said, all right, I'll be your king under one condition. You come and put your trust under my shadow. And if you don't, I will come and consume the cedar of Lebanon. You must trust in me. And that was the rebuke given way back in judges. It's interesting. In each case, the fruit trees felt that they had a special purpose, that they couldn't compromise and give that up to be ruling over these people.
Do you remember what Jesus said about the way it is supposed to be in the church? He said that unto them the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. And watch this part, " And they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors, but ye shall not be so." In other words, put your trust under me.
I remember when I went to the place where George Washington's home, and as you're there in George Washington's home, they have this thing built now in the museum that when you walk in on a huge banner, we are his benefactors. And the scripture just came to my mind. Wow, that's not supposed to be so among you. All right, so you know some of the other stories. They came, and one of the biggest rebukes came when we get up to when Saul is asking when the people are asking Saul to be king, and we remember that story.
But here are the words again and the rebuke that he gives about this concept. Samuel says, and there's rebuke, " And the Lord said unto Samuel, ' Harken into the voice of the people and all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me." So the people of Israel wanted a king. He wanted to be a special relationship God wanted a special relationship with the covenant people of God, but they wanted a king. He says, " They haven't rejected you. They've rejected me.
That I should not reign over them. Now therefore hearken into their voice, how albeit yet protest solemnly unto them and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. And that's what they did. Hosea puts it this way, the prophet Hosea. And watch this, when we're trying, here's what I'm trying to get you to understand. The kingdom of God has a special fruit, a special presence here on this earth.
And God still gives us earthly governments, but He gives them to us in a rebuke of those who want to live by law and the fear of the sword. Hosea puts it this way explicitly. O Israel, in Hosea 13:9, the prophet, " O Israel, thou hath destroyed thyself. But in me is thy help, is thine help. I will be thy king. Where is any other that may serve thee in all thy cities? And thy judges of whom thou saith give me a king and princess. I gave thee a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.
The interesting thing, when we look at this concept of God giving us a king in His anger is that He will rule His people, but He wants the people of God to be in a different relationship with Him as we live in this earth. Well, who's going to rule then? Daniel puts it nicely. Daniel 4, the prophet Daniel, chapter 4:17.
He says, " This matter is by the decree of the watchers, the angels, and the demand by the word of the holy ones to the intent that the living may know that the most high ruleth in the kingdom of men," watch this, " and giveth to whomsoever he will, and seteth up over it the bassist of men." It's not saying much for the different people who've ruled. They're the bassist of men. I like this quote again from Peter Ridden.
" For these words, we can see how the authority of the government grew and where it came from, namely from the wrath of God. We read in Scripture, ' You shall give us a king. So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away." These words show us that governmental authority was not given from grace, but from disfavor and anger. So what happened then? What did the prophets dream of? What did they see in the future? The prophets spoke of a time that the way of God would be restored.
I love the idea that in Israel, there's a museum there that has the whole of the Isaiah scrolls that they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'd love to see it someday. But Isaiah gives this beautiful analogy and all the prophets spoke of a time when the Messiah would come and finally set these things right.
The prophet spoke in Isaiah chapter 2, " And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountains of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow into it. And many people shall go and say, ' Come ye and let us go up to the mountains of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways. And we will walk in His path. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people. And they shall beat their swords into plow shears and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nations. Neither shall they learn war anymore. And we saw that in Isaiah, excuse me, in the early church, Irenaeus quotes this passage directly on the fulfillment of what the Kingdom of God did here. And then it comes into Isaiah 9, one of my favorite passages in the Scriptures, and the prophets speak of this.
In Isaiah chapter 9, it says, " The people that walks in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them hath the light shine. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel with fire." In other words, their uniforms and their things shall be with burning and fuel for fire. Why?
And they're speaking of a time, " For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Watch this now. Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
And that's what Jesus did. The New Testament writers wanted us not to miss that this is what happened. When Matthew writes in his scriptures, he wrote that in Matthew 4:14, he said that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Isaiah the prophet, the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphthal, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who set in darkness have seen a great light. And upon those who set in the region in the shadow of death, light has dawn.
Matthew says, from the time Jesus began to preach and say, " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Mark says, " Now after John was put into prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." The time is fulfilled. And remember, of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. The zeal of the Lord will establish it. Jesus came and then so this is the context.
This is the context that you've got to read the teachings of Jesus. They're not some meditation to put on a poster on the wall. They're meant to be lived out in reality here on earth. So Jesus came, another one of my favorite scenes, as I imagined the Bible, and He came in there you know to the synagogue to read the Scriptures. And as he was there, he opens up the scroll and began to read, and I love this scene.
And he says, " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year, the Jubilee of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it again to the minister and sat down. And I love this scene. And all the eyes of and the eyes of all of them that were in the synagogue were fastened onto him.
And he began to say, " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." That's what Jesus wants us, and that's the context. It's in this perspective that you must read the Sermon on the Mount. We need to allow the teachings of Jesus and the establishing of His kingdom on earth be what's birthing every one of the generations that we live and what the church should be like. Remember, in the beginning, the kingdom was a garden. At the end from the rising of the sun to its going down to the same, it will one day be.
But now it's us, the church. And we are to represent His way, His life, what He was, what it was supposed to be in the beginning. Remember, even some of the teachings that Jesus said, during that interim time of the Old Testament, He said, " Moses, because of the hardness of your heart, permitted this." Here he is specifically speaking of divorce and remarriage. But he said, " But from the beginning, it wasn't so.
Jesus brought in the new covenant to establish God's dream, God's design for humanity, and He wants you and me to live it out." Jesus said, " Now I say six times in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount," Jesus begins his radical changes with things like this. You have heard that it has been said. And he said things like, " You have heard that it was said of them of old times. But now I say, but now I say." So you see the difference?
And in my testimony, when I began to read the teachings of Jesus, and my wife and I were in Germany, and I began to read the Sermon on the Mount, that's where that supernatural grace light bulb moment hit us. I mean that. And I don't believe that these things should be looked at as some tacked-on part of Christianity. It's not something that's just added on as a restriction or anything like that. The teachings of Jesus, the Word of God, is filled with His Spirit, and He wants us to live that out today.
That's what He wants from us. And you know when that happened to me, and I began to get a concept of this kingdom of God, remember you heard the story last night. I'm kind of embarrassed about my patriotism that I had. But you know I began to wonder, I wonder, is there a kingdom purpose in this patriotism used in the wrong way? I was using it in the wrong way. And I thought, you know, maybe there is.
Because I realized that God wants us to seek first this kingdom of God, to be about His business and His kingdom on this life. And I began to allow that patriotism grow for my desire and my sincerity and my love for Jesus Christ and His kingdom and want to be a part of that and want to spread that gospel of the kingdom to all the earth. And you know what? You know what that did for me? The fortunate thing with when I was finally, when I saw the bigness of the Kingdom of God, it didn't make me this anti-American.
I love America. It's a great country. I love the privileges we have here. And we have the opportunity as a church in America to do things like no one else can. I love that. But when I saw that this kingdom transcended all times and all cultures and all people like that man through the Berlin Wall that I shook hands with, my entire sense of patriotism didn't become anti-American. It absorbed all these things of this earth to represent and be that kingdom of God here on this earth. It was a new kind of patriotism.
And we're supposed to represent what will be here on Earth. He called us ambassadors. That's the way you're supposed to read the New Testament. Not just when you get to heaven when you die, but being an ambassador of heaven, of Christ on this earth. That's what the church should look like.
On Judgment Day, on Judgment Day, and this is an imagination here, but on Judgment Day, those who are being judged should be able to look from Judgment Day and see and just finally explain to them what everything was supposed to be and look down upon the church and say, " Oh, so that's what those guys were talking about." You're living the reality of the New Kingdom life, the heaven here on earth, a new humanity born not of the will of man, but of God, filled with His Spirit, given the promise that you will never
die, that you will live forever, and those are the things we're supposed to express.
An ambassador of Christ, an embassy of heaven. All right, I remember years ago, I was digging through some sort of looking for some interesting things on music. And one of my favorite composers is Bach. I like him because he signed his most famous pieces with Sola de Gloria, which means only to God, only to God. And he's one of my favorite composers, and one of the most spiritual ones is when you start studying some of the composers' lives, it's not so great.
But there was an interesting thing, and I've been over to Europe several times, so I think there's some possibility that this story is true. But in some of those old castles and old houses, they have documents that are just setting around for literally, for centuries, for years, that are in someone's house and something. And there was a musicologist, which is a guy who studies manuscripts and things. And there's actually several pieces of Bach which have never been discovered.
He wrote in his diary about different things that he's written. We don't know where they are. So some musicologists were going through old estates and old places in Germany and Europe and trying to find those different places. Well, as the story goes, I read in this old 1890 New York Times newspaper from New York.
It told this story that as they were going there, looking through these different estates, so the story goes, that the man came into this one estate and he happened to walk by and he saw that this guy was doing, the gardener was putting up these different trees. When you do this tree, they had these ties down to make the tree stand perfectly straight. But as he walked by, he just happened to notice that the paper that was wrapping around that tree to keep not from pulling on the bark was something kind of strange.
He noticed it right away as a music manuscript. So he walked up to him and he said, excuse me, sir, where did you get that paper? He said, oh, it's up in the attic. There was a whole chest full of there, and I've been using that. And so he went up there and he discovered that there were some of the ancient manuscripts of Bach in this that the gardener had been using for years. And the thing about that is that that's sometimes the way all of us, particularly the way I used to be, are reading the Word of God.
You see, Johan Sebastian Bach intended this manuscript to be a symphony, to be played, to be beautiful. But instead, they were using it for a purpose that was not exactly right. And they were using that to be wadding of paper around this tree. And that's with the Word of God. When Jesus came to establish His way in His kingdom, He gave it as a beautiful symphony that He wants His church to sing. He wants His church to live out on this earth. And we're turning it into something that it's really not intended to be.
So please, as I finish up this message, why I spend so much time is that if you're coming to the teachings of Jesus, and you're looking at them, and there's some sort of abstract thing, and you're looking at them, so let's just get to the real stuff. Let's see about how you get to heaven, how Paul, and I love the Apostle Paul. Every word of God is true. The Apostle Paul tells us how to live this grace-filled life. But even Paul testifies of Jesus.
And we need to allow the teachings of Jesus to come forth and to play this beautiful symphony of the design. And that's why sometimes as we look at non-resistance, it seems abstract. Something we put to a different millennium like I used to do, or a different age or something. And that's totally taking this beautiful symphony and using it the wrong way. So, total simplicity.
As we look at the teachings of Jesus and why I spent this time on this, I want you again to imagine how will it someday be from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same? How will that existence be? Dream with me. Think with me. What will that look like? That is what Jesus is calling us. Be what is to become.