Lecture

1.1
The Gospel of the Kingdom
Tanya Walker




What is the Modern World?
Notes
Complexity and challenge

This modern world is host to an exponential increase in anxiety and

depression and emotional and mental disorders that are the
commonplace lived experience of our day.

One Question: I s t h e G o s p e l S t i l l R e l e v a n t ?

What is the Gospel?

The Gospel is Personal
Our condition according to Scripture:

Dead, Broken
In darkness
Internal struggles and battles
Social breakdown
Physical deterioration of our world and bodies

These were all the symptoms. The root cause was and is the wrenching of
our relationship with God and the death in that relationship which brought
death to everything else.

“But now…”

By Christ’s physical death and resurrection, by the will of the God who
loved us so much: We have been forgiven.

Not by our works

Not by our attempts to gain love
Not by our efforts

We have been saved by Grace!

Colossians 1:13-14
He has rescued us from the dominion of our greatest
enemy and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he
loves, through whom we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins.

Is it good news to you?

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Notes

Have we grown so accustomed to the narrative that we cease to wonder

in amazement at what God has done for us?

“To every man who is ever saved by the gospel, it comes as a

piece of news as novel, fresh, and startling as if he had never
heard it before. The letter may be old, but the inward meaning
is as new as though the ink were not yet dry in the pen of
revelation. […] If thou hast ever felt thy guilt, if thou hast
been burdened under a sense of it, if thou hast looked into
thine own heart to find some good thing, and been bitterly
disappointed if thou hast gone up and down through the
world to try this and that scheme of getting relief, and found
them all fail thee like dry wells in the desert which mock the
traveler, will be a sweet piece of news to thy heart that there
is hear [sic] present salvation in the Savior.”
Charles Spurgeoni

“Don’t be afraid that I will find you hiding in the Son I love.”
Terry Virgo

Grace: The Father’s love for Jesus, the Father’s affirmation of Jesus,
now ours.

Hebrews 4:16
Let us approach the throne of God with
confidence…

Many mistake the foundation for the whole house and have stopped our
engagement with the Gospel far too soon.

The Gospel Heralds a Kingdom – A Public Order

Euangelion : a political or military term for good news made by public
announcement

In Jesus’ time, primarily connected to Caesar

‘Caesar is Lord!’

Jesus brings the euangelion

Mark 1:1
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God.

No one would have missed its kingly intonation. The message is clear:
It’s not Caesar but Jesus who is Lord and Jesus who is King.

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Notes

The Gospel of the Kingdom

We have made the Gospel too much about the individual. We have
forgotten that the individuals, who first heard it and announced it,
understood it as the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The trends of our time impact our understanding of the

Gospel:

Western individualism silencing the church

Dualism separating spiritual from earthly

“We have been made to believe that we must choose

between God and the World. We have forgotten that God
created the World, and that He is King on earth as He is in
heaven.” N . T . W r i g h t

Matthew 6:10
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as
it is in heaven.

The earth matters.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human

existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does
not say, ‘Mine.’’ A b r a h a m K u p y e r

What does this Kingdom look like?

Luke 4:18-19
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the favour of the Lord.
…Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

In other words a kingdom where all will be well, Justice will roll on like a
river, Righteousness like a never failing stream. Sorrow and sighing will
cease. And the Lord will be King.

Even this reality belongs to God, and is and will be under His ultimate rule.

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Notes

Matthew 13:31-32
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,
which a man took and planted in his field. Though
it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it
is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree,
so that the birds come and perch in its branches.

Mystery of the Kingdom

P r e s e n t : kingdom established on earth by Christ in incarnate

form

F u t u r e : a future event that will herald in the Kingdom of God

in its fullness

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We await a future consummation of the Kingdom of God, but those who have
eyes to see, and ears to hear, see God in His world. He is even now the King.

The Gospel and the People of God

Romans 8:19, 21
Creation waits in eager expectation for the children of
God to be revealed […] creation itself will be liberated
from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom
and glory of the children of God.

“Glory is not simply a kind of luminescence, as though the point of

salvation were that we would eventually shine light electric light
bulbs!” T o m W r i g h t

G l o r y : a “power” word denoting authority, rule, and reign

The invitation of the Gospel is more than the saving of our souls. It is the
divine rule in our hearts: The Kingdom established in us and through us in
the world.

Psalm 8: 4-6
What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet.

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Notes

It’s about a kingdom. It’s about a king. And we are his image bearers
designed to rule.

“The call of the Gospel is for the church to implement the victory of
God in the world. The cross is not just an example to be followed, it
is an achievement to be worked out, and put into practice.”
Tom Wright

The Economy of God

We are a generation that is wary of authority.

Can we trust this kingdom?

Can we trust ourselves to rule in this kingdom?

The Gospel is the answer:

The Gospel confronts all imperial narratives.

Mark 10:45
For the son of Man came not to be served, but to
serve.

Our story is about the crucified and risen Jesus, ruling the world by the
means and methods of his self-giving love.

Our means and methods must be congruent with the Gospel. This is the
upside-down Kingdom.

How does the Gospel impact the way we engage with the
modern world?

1. The Call to Stillness

The Gospel allows us the most counter-cultural of movements: the ability to be still.

“In Christ alone my hope is found

He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand.”
Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty

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Notes

The Gospel makes possible an inner reconciled stillness.

We have had a fundamental change of identity.

2. The Call to Servant-Hearted Stewardship

The Gospel catches us up into the great adventure of God: restoring and
redeeming the whole of the created order.

It calls us
It releases us
It empowers us

This is a call to engage.

There is no sacred/secular divide. We live out the Kingdom in business,

politics, the arts, contributing to culture and being known for our life-giving
expressions of the indiscriminate love of God.

3. The Call to Discipleship

We end up asking ourselves:

Does it even matter if I engage with this?

What difference does one sacrificial gift make?

The responsibility for the end results is not on our shoulders – it is carried
by God. The call is much simpler, although it is not simplistic. It is a call to
discipleship.

I Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand
firm. Let nothing move you. Always give
yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because
you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

It is the community of the church, one body together, each member

playing its part that changes the world.

4. The Call to Proclaim

Isaiah 52:7
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who
bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good
tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion: ‘Your
God reigns!’

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Notes

The world is in desperate need of good news: good news of a Savior and a
King. The very word “Gospel” has implicit within itself the proclamation of
that news.

Let us not be intimidated.

Let us not forget we carry living water.

We look out on our world and say: Praise God!

We have Savior. We have a King.

i From Sermon No. 758, “The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God”
in The Complete Works of C.H. Spurgeon, Volume 13: Sermons 728 to 787.
Spurgeon, Charles H.

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