Chapter 20: The Kingdom Can't Be Kept Quiet. When we join something that's going to cause the world to hate us, it's natural to want to keep it quiet. Why stir up trouble? Let's keep everything hush-hush. But our king won't let us keep his kingdom a secret. Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light, and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. We must remember that a person can't even see the kingdom of God unless he's born again.
So how is anyone even going to know about this kingdom unless we who are born again tell them? Jesus hasn't hired an advertising agency to get the word out about his kingdom. Instead, he has commissioned all of his citizens to be news spreaders. As soon as Jesus returned from the wilderness after his baptism, he immediately began preaching. And what did he preach?
Matthew tells us, "From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" Jesus lost no time traveling throughout Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and he quickly began recruiting others to join his kingdom. Jesus not only taught his disciples about the kingdom of God, but he also gave them specific training on how to preach the gospel of the kingdom to others. Right after he selected his twelve apostles, Jesus sent them out to preach.
And what were they to preach? "As you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" Later, Jesus trained seventy disciples and sent them throughout the land in groups of two.
Again, he told them that after they entered a city, they were to "heal the sick there" and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you." Before his death, Jesus prophesied, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." And among the last things he said to his apostles was, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe
all things that I have commanded you." So kingdom preaching was not going to end when Jesus left the earth.
His disciples were to preach all of the things he had taught them about the kingdom. They were to recruit other citizens for the kingdom. The whole world would hear the good news about this upside-down kingdom. And with God behind them, nobody could stop them. Not surprisingly, it was this noisy aspect of the kingdom that caused most of the problems.
If the disciples had retreated to some desert oasis and started a spiritual community there away from the world, there probably would have been no clash with the governmental authorities. After all, neither the Jewish nor the Roman governments bothered the Qumran community by the Dead Sea until the Jewish War of Independence. If the disciples of Jesus had followed the same pattern, they might have lived long and peaceful lives. But that wouldn't have been acceptable to the king.
He too could have lived a long and peaceful life if he had just kept quiet. But the Father had sent Jesus into the world, not away from it. And Jesus had done the same with his disciples. Their mission was to spread the news about the kingdom, not to hide it. So no sooner had the Spirit fallen on the apostles than they were out preaching Jesus Christ and telling their fellow Jews about his kingdom. Up to now, the Jewish authorities had left the apostles alone. But this was too much.
So they arrested the apostles and told them to quit teaching the people about Jesus. But the apostles fearlessly replied, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." Later, they told the authorities, "We ought to obey God rather than men." Soon after that, the Jewish authorities put to death Stephen, one of the disciples, and they began imprisoning as many Christians as they could find.
But even that didn't slow down the kingdom. The Christians who fled from Jerusalem preached the word everywhere they went. Kingdom Christians just won't keep quiet. When the gospel of the kingdom reached Thessalonica, the Jews there protested to the authorities, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too." One basic aspect of the kingdom is that it can't be kept secret. It must be proclaimed. It must continue to bring in new subjects.
Whenever a group of kingdom Christians are silenced, whenever they lose interest in witnessing, they begin to deteriorate spiritually. It's like a stream of water that's no longer moving. Pretty soon, algae begins to grow. Eventually, the water becomes brackish and smells putrid. Likewise, stagnant Christians can become a stench to their king.