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A Kingdom of miracles

Matt 4: 23 – 25

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 19 Mar, 2006

LAST WEEK I spoke about the need to be a church which reflects far more closely the miraculous nature of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Today, I want to look at the underlying theology.

God wants us to be charismatics, but not charismaniacs. What I mean by that is that the Holy Spirit gives gifts for ministry, but we have to be careful that we don’t get carried away with spiritual gifts.

“Charismatic” means that you believe in the Holy Spirit’s gifts and try to use them. “Charismaniac” means that you are obsessed with spiritual gifts and you have unrealistic expectations about them.

Bill — a deacon at a church I belonged to — was very upset about “...these charismatics.” One of the other deacons — Eddy — said, “Charismatic — that word means, ‘having to do with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.’ We Baptists believe in the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, don’t we?”

Bill agreed. “Yes, we believe in those things. What I meant was, we have to do something about these Pentecostals.”

Eddy replied, “But we believe in Pentecost too, don’t we?”

“Of course we do!” said Bill.

“Well, maybe the problem isn’t so bad, then.” said Eddy.

God wants us to be charismatics. He wants us to use the tools he gives us through his Holy Spirit, so that lives will be touched by God himself, and not through mere human effort.

And this has a lot to do with miracles.

Did you notice, in that passage from Matthew’s Gospel, how Jesus works in ministry? His ministry has two parts: a speaking part —

^{MATT 4:23} Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom,

— and there’s a doing part:

...and healing every disease and sickness among the people. ²⁴ News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.

Jesus backed up his teaching and preaching with healing and deliverance from evil spirits.

But what was his teaching about?

He proclaimed good news of the Kingdom.

All God’s interventions in the affairs of our world have to do with the Kingdom of God. Whenever God intervenes in the affairs of our world, it is an expression of the Kingdom of God — the Kingdom which is here, but which is not yet fully expressed.

There’s a close link between the proclamation of God’s Kingdom — that is, of the Kingdom of Heaven — and God’s powerful working in human affairs.

So I want to look today at God’s Kingdom — where it came from, where it is going, and how it is revealed.

Where it came from

That might seem a strange idea. Where did God’s kingdom come from? Hasn’t it always existed?

You know the words of the Lord’s Prayer:

...your kingdom come

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

In a sense, there has always been a heavenly kingdom.

God has always ruled in heaven.

But there is rebellion. Adam and Eve rebelled against God. The Bible shows that.

God still used them. Adam and Eve still had their role in God’s eternal purposes. But they no longer enjoyed the unbroken relationship they had with God in the beginning.

But rebellion begins before human rebellion.

The serpent says,

GEN 3:1b “Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman says that God told them not to eat from the fruit of the tree or they would die.

^3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

There is rebellion in every word he says.

The Bible makes it clear. Evil has a spiritual and ancent origin. It is not there at the very beginning. Genesis opens, and we meet God. Then we see the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, hovering over the deep. God is active, speaking in creative power. Right at the beginning, he looks at all he made and declares it good.

But then the man and the woman are in the garden, and evil comes to them in the form of the serpent, and both the woman and the man disobeyed God and unleashed all kinds of evil and wickedness on the world, and all kinds of destruction on the created order.

The perfection where God was in full control and everything was in harmony gave way to chaos and darkness.

The Bible hints at the origins of evil in the spiritual realms. An angel, named Lucifer, rebelled and took part of the heavenly armies with him.

There is no clear, blow–by–blow account. The only other thing we can say for certain is that God chooses to regain his power, not by overpowering force, but by redeeming love.

In this fallen world, in this rebellious age, Satan, Lucifer by another name, is the “Prince of the power of the air” — as St Paul puts it. Not the supreme ruler of Heaven, but exercising vast control within this realm.

That’s what God challenges through Jesus.

First, God called Abram from Ur in Chaldea. He planned to establish a people through him.

^{GEN 15:4} Then the word of the LORD came to him: “...a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” ⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

^15:6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Centuries later, years after his descendants through Isaac became a nation, they had a king. That king was David. God promised him,

`You shall never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.’

Israel knew that this Davidic king would be the Messiah for whom they were looking.

Jesus is a descendant of David. He was the king anointed and appointed by God.

When he comes proclaiming the Kingdom of God, it fulfills that promise.

When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God, he is saying, “God’s rule is being re–established, and I’m the king God has sent!”

Our aim is to reflect the works of Jesus in re–asserting God’s rule in the world.

Where it is going

The Kingdom of God comes from the heart of God and from the obedience of Jesus in restarting the rule of God in our world.

But something started has to go somewhere.

Jesus taught,

^{MATT 13:31} He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Repeatedly, he showed that the Kingdom is growing. Sometimes the growth is hidden, others it is as open as the growth of a tiny seed into a shrub big enough for birds to nest in.

But the Kingdom isn’t just something growing in this world. It is something that eventually will fill everything on earth and in heaven.

There has to be judgment on this world.

Jesus taught a parable about a man who planted good seed on his farm and an enemy sowed weeds among the good seed.

It sprang up, and the farm–workers wanted to pull up the weeds.

^{MT 13:29} “ `No,’ he answered, `because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ “

The judgment will come. All evil will be destroyed. And then the Kingdom will be fully–revealed in all its splendour.

As Isaiah said around 800 bc,

^{ISA 11:1} A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;

from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

^11:2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him--

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of power,

the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD--

^11:3 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;

^11:4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,

with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;

with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked...

^11:6 The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them...

^11:9 They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

as the waters cover the sea.

What a vision of the future!

And Jesus adds his own spin on another of Isaiah’s prophecies:

^{LUKE 4:18} “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

The Kingdom will be just and peaceful, righteous and blessed. The poor will hear good news for a change; the prisoners will be freed and the blind made to see. All oppression will be ended and God’s favour will pour on all who are in the kingdom.

And this is the Kingdom which has begun and will never, never end. Our goal is to recreate the conditions of God’s Kingdom in this world.

How is it revealed?

Only by faith can you and I can experience the Kingdom of God as it will become. It is here for those with eyes to see, but it is not fully revealed.

So we anticipate by faith what is still to come. We have hope like no one else has, because we know that the promises will be fulfilled. Hope is the future aspect of faith.

But we don’t yet possess the Kingdom. It is not fully here, it is both now, and not yet.

What we do possess is the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Spirit of the living God. He is the guarantee of things to come.

As Paul tells the Ephesians,

^EPH1:13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession — to the praise of his glory.

We need only one thing to link us to the coming age of redemption, and that is faith. No deeds, no strenuous thinking, no powerful emotional states, can ever bring us into contact with the future. But faith can.

And here’s the amazing thing: If we have one rope binding us to the coming Kingdom — the rope of faith — God sends two of his own ropes back to us: by the Holy Spirit, we receive these two ropes. We receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit to empower us for ministry, and we receive the fruit of the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus.

God equips us and empowers us to do the works of Jesus and to reveal his character in our own lives.

Putting it together

This is a very difficult topic. We have seen how God had a plan from the beginning to build a new people to represent his name. He began with Abram — whom he renamed Abraham. He took Isaac and Jacob and made the nation of Israel. He established a covenant wth Moses and with David. He took his one and only Son, Jesus — born of the virgin, in the line of descent from David, and made him Lord and messiah over a renewed and expanded Israel, which was and remains open to believing Gentiles, like you and me.

And his Spirit is implanted in every one of us as a guarantee of blessings yet to come, blessings that can be ours only when Judgment comes and the Kingdom is revealed in all its splendour.

It is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, who convicts each of us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. It is the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and shows it to us. It is the Spirit who brings each and every one of us to Jesus.

And that is the greatest miracle of all: that God should take a rebel sinner like you or me, and make us into saints of God, sons and daughters without blemish, princes and princesses fit to sit on thrones beside our Lord.

But there are many other miracles of love and grace, and God loves to work them through you and me.

We can’t guarantee results every time. We live in a fallen and imperfect world.

But we can guarantee that some miracles will happen sometimes as we pray and as we bring situations before the Lord.

And whenever God unexpectedly provides, that’s a miracle. Whenever someone is healed, it’s a miracle. Whenever things slot together like pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle, the Kingdom has broken into this world with another miracle.

Let’s live in faith and hope. Let’s not dismiss God’s working or scorn it when we see it.

Our God is alive! He wants us to discover him, to use what he gives us, and to live in eager expectation that he will reveal himself at any moment.

Here’s our chance. Let’s minister to each other again this week like we did last week.

Let’s never give up, until we see God at work in our midst, doing great wonders and revealing the signs of the coming Kingdom, when Jesus our Lord rules over all.

AMEN

(During this service, we prayed for one of our number who has been looking for employment for some time.

As we were praying for her, a phone call came in on her mobile. It was someone from a company she had lodged an application with, offering her an interview during the week.)

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)