Matthew, Part 1 Lesson 2
THE KING AND THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN David Arthur
What Does Repentance Have To Do With The ComingKingdom?
What does it really mean to “repent”? And what does this coming of the kingdom of heaven really mean to you and to me? Is there an application that we can find in our own lives of this ancient text, 2000 years old?Is there an application of the coming of the kingdom? And what does it mean to repent? Those are the questions that we're going to look at today when we examine our text of Matthew, chapters three and four.
Now, I want to pick up where we left off last week and kind of show you a big picture. If you think about the kingdom, it's going to be described, but in chapters one and two we started off. How did chapter 1 start off? It started off with a long list of a genealogy.Right? And last week we noted that genealogy is not boring, but a genealogy is theology. That there was theology wrapped up in this description of the one who was to come. All throughout this genealogy, we're being led down a path of so-and-so begot so-and-so and son of so-and-so so that we could find our way to who? To Jesus. And Jesus is described in the first verse as three different things. The first one he's described as the Messiah. Then, he was described as the son of -- anybody remember? David. And then the son of Abraham. And we saw last week that this wasn't just a mere representation of who was to come and what is this name Jesus and who is he really to be, but really we saw was it was history about to pop. It was prophecy fully loaded about to explode and described to us the one, according to chapter 1, verse 21, who's name will be Jesus and he will save his people from their sins.
This is how Matthew starts off his gospel. Last week I said there was 400 years of silence and it was broken with this. What I mean by that is in its written record from the scriptures that is how the Bible introduces Jesus. It comes from a period of silence between the testaments and it opens up with this is the book of beginnings, the record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, and the son of Abraham.
Well in chapters 1 & 2, we get this introduction of -- we said already Jesus, but it is an introduction.If you think about it, it is introducing the King. In chapter 1, we have His genealogy. We have His background. In chapter 2 we see what about Jesus? What event is described in chapter two? His birth. Right? His birth is described. And in chapter 2, there is already conflict.Right? The guys show up from the Far East.They show up, and they're looking for the King of the Jews. Herod has special interest in this.Right? Because HE is called the “King of the Jews”. And so he poses and says I'd like to know this King. But not so he could pay homage and honor Him, but so he could destroy Him. So, there's already at the beginning of this King we see conflict. Now, in chapters three and four, we're going to see another introduction called “the introduction to the King's kingdom”. So,1 & 2 is an intro to the King, 3 & 4 is an introduction to the King's kingdom. And then, what happens in chapters 5-- all the way to the end of Matthew, he begins to show you this King and His kingdom. Next week we'll look at the actual teachings of this kingdom. He tells us what it is about. We'll see activities and actions of the King demonstrating the coming of His kingdom. So, really in chapters 1-4 is an introduction. It is a way of saying “Listen, I am about to introduce to you the one named Jesus who will save his people from their sins, and I will show you his kingdom.”
So, if we look at chapters 3 & 4, what you did in your homework, I've written up here just a brief outline. Let's go through this real quickly. If we look at the beginning of chapter 3, who is the main character? John the Baptist. And what is John the Baptist up to? What is his message? Great, it is a real simple message. It starts with an action called “repent”. And why does he tell us to repent? Exactly, very good. For the kingdom -- I'm just going to draw a little crown here for kingdom -- is “at hand”, or it could be translated “is near”. In other words it is about to usher in. Repent for the kingdom is at hand. He's also not only preaching his message, what else is he doing? Exactly. He is baptizing. There are those -- it says all of Jerusalem, all the people were coming out to be baptized by him. Then, we find out Jesus is showing up. This is the first time we see him in his adulthood. Jesus shows up, and he wants to be baptized. In that baptism, something very significant happens. What is it? We hear a voice.Right? We see a dove. This is beautiful, isn't it? In chapter 3:13 -17, Jesus is baptized, and it ends with God the Father.Right? Think about this as a triangle. We have God the Father speaking.Who is he speaking about? His Son.Right? And then what comes to His Son? Right? The Holy Spirit is in the form of a dove. All right. If you have ever wondered how do I explain the Trinity, how do I show somebody the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we’re not going to find the word Trinity. You won't find a definitive verse that says this is the Trinity and a definition, but rather you can show him passages like this where you have all three persons in the Godhead being active. We have the father up above who is sending the Holy Spirit who is speaking, but the recipient is Jesus. So, we have Jesus being baptized, and we have in a sense a kind of an inaugural statement being made here. He says it one other time in the gospels. It is later on in chapter 17 at the Transfiguration he again says the same thing, and he adds listen to him. And this is my son, listen to him. And now we have the authority of God being conferred upon and inaugurating this ministry after Jesus' baptism.
Then chapter 4 opens up with Jesus being led into the wilderness, and he's led into the wild, he's been fasting, and the scripture says he becomes hungry, and who shows up? Satan, himself. Remember last week when I talked about the “seed theology”? Remember last week how we saw if you start at Genesis, and you work your way through you'll see the “seed of the serpent” versus the “seed of the woman” coming in clashing, but it culminates between who? Who is the final battle going to be between? Jesus and Satan himself. Here we have one of the preludes to that conflict. We have the conflicts first clash. We have the first battle we can say in the sense. And Jesus is tempted three different times. He's tempted, and three different times he responds with what? With the Word of God. There's a good practical lesson in that. The Bible is very clear, we're not to take Satan on ourselves. Paul tells the Ephesians we are to dress ourselves in Christ, in his armor, and then we're to pray and allow Jesus to defeat him. Here we see Jesus using the Word of God to defeat the temptations.
And after the baptism, which is an inaugural thing, an initiating thing in his ministry, and after the temptation, sort of the first real crisis, the real battle there, Jesus then begins his preaching and teaching ministry. Now, it's significant what happens at the beginning of chapter 4:12. What happens to John the Baptist? He is taken away into custody. So, Jesus tells us beginning in verse 17, it tells us what Jesus' message is. What does He say? Sounds very familiar doesn't it? The very same thing we saw in chapter 3:2 we see in chapter 4:17. Jesus also says repent and again why? Right. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then we find at the end of our text that we studied this week, we see a summary statement. Let's look at that summary statement again together. In verse 23 it says this: Jesus was going throughout all of Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.
There's a simple list here. In verse 23, what's the first thing we see? He is what? He is going, and where is he going? He's going all throughout Galilee. And in His going, what is He doing? He's teaching. Do you know where He's teaching? He's teaching in their -- their is a pronoun referring to those in Galilee -- in their synagogues. Let me ask you, what kind of people worship in synagogues? Jews, right. You're going to see as you work your way through Matthew that Matthew's gospel has this real strong Jewish flavor to it. He uses terminology that the Jews would grasp on to. For example he uses when we talk about kingdom, 32 times in His gospel he describes it as the kingdom of heaven. He also describes it four different times as the kingdom of God, but if you go to the other gospels like Mark and Luke and John, you'll see them describing the very same event with the very same narrative except they don't say kingdom of heaven, they say kingdom of God. There's some clues in there that this version of the gospel or this aspect of the gospel that the Holy Spirit gave to Matthew is one for the Jewish people. So Jesus is teaching in their synagogues.
Thirdly,He's proclaiming. What is He proclaiming? He's proclaiming the gospel, but it's not the gospel we think. It's not the He died, rose again.It's not the gospel of 1 Corinthians 15. It's in the Greek,euangellion, we get our word evangelical from it. It literally means “good news.” But He's proclaiming the gospel of what? There it is again. Of the kingdom.
And then fourthly, what is He doing? Healing, good. All these participles. He's going, He's teaching, He's proclaiming, and He's healing. But He's healing only a couple of different sicknesses and illnesses., Right? No. Did you notice He's healing how many kinds? Every kind of disease and sickness. And then in verses 24 and 25, it kind of shows us some of those diseases. What showed up in that list that surprised you? Yes, demonic. Isn't that interesting? Can you think of a better way for Jesus to demonstrate that his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven is taken over than to drive out of people the possessor, the demons of the other kingdom? Can you think of a better? I love it. It's not like He shakes them or concocts some recipe and makes them drink it or puts them in some kind of cage or beats it out of them.He simply does what? Speaks to them. By the word of His authority, the kingdom of Satan is being cast out. Isn't that a beautiful picture? So He's healing every sickness and disease which includes casting out of demons.
This is kind of the big picture. Now, if you look up here, what is repeated both by John and by Jesus? “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Now, I want to make the case that this is the key verse for these, not only these two texts, but this is the key verse out of which we'll see Matthew begin to unfold. For example, you can go through the New Testament.And if you could just simply say, what did I learn about the kingdom, the kingdom of God? And if you just simply did a survey of the New Testament, you would find an incredible amount of truth. You would see a paradigm to think about Jesus and His Coming. So, let me ask you, how does that hit you? When I say the kingdom of heaven is at hand, how does that hit you? Some of you might say it sounds like a Biblical term. I really don't get it. Some of you who are up on your current events would say I've heard that term used by others. I've heard that term used by others who quite honestly aren't part of us. So, what we want to do is ask what is this “repent for the kingdom of heaven”, what is does it mean. So, two questions come out of that. What is the kingdom of heaven? Real basic question. And secondly, what does it mean to repent in light of the coming of the kingdom of heaven?
One, let's define the kingdom of heaven. Secondly, let's define repentance in light of the coming of the kingdom of heaven. I'm currently reading this book I picked up. And I picked it up just to be honest with you because the author wrote a book called Into Thin Air which is an account of Mount Everest, a true story.She's a mountain climber. And it was such a great book. When I saw this, I just grabbed it because I saw the author's name. I started reading it over the Christmas holidays, and it is called Under the Banner of Heaven, a story of violent faith. Now, this is a true story -- this is not a novel.So, it is reportive writing.It is very well written. It is on a certain branch within the Mormon Church. Note, I paused there for a while. I was trying to figure out how to describe this Mormon group. But he describes the fundamentalists. Listen how he opens up his book. “Balanced atop the highest spire of the SaltLake temple, gleaming in the Utah sun, a statute of the AngelMoroni stands watch over downtown Salt Lake City with his golden trumpet raised.”
Here he describes the Church of Latter-day Saints.And he says this. “At last count there were more than 11 million saints the world over.
How does that compare? Well Mormonism is described as the fastest growing faith in the western hemisphere. What does that look like? Presently in the United States, there are more Mormons than Presbyterians or Episcopalians. Kind of gives you an idea,Right? On the planet as a whole, there are now more Mormons than Jews. Mormonism is considered in some sober academic circles to be well on its way to becoming a major world religion, the first such faith to emerge since Islam.”
Now listen how they describe themselves. “Mormons and Mormon fundamentalists are convinced that God regards them and them alone as his favorite children”….”a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.”
Does that sound familiar? What group of people are they trying to take over or trying to become? The Jews.They seem themselves somehow as the Jews in the Bible. And this is real life and contemporary.Right? You know what I'm talking about. This is a contemporary issue for the United States of America. They use the term kingdom all throughout this book, and they use it y'all to justify horrible things. In this book it describes men who have 20 and 30 spouses, bearing 200 to 300 children. And these girls are taken away from their families, given away by their fathers at ages 12 and 13, against their will, to become the spouse of multiple spouses in these families. All in the name of the kingdom of God. All right. If that's not enough to scare you, I went to the Koran.That's a scary thing. I pulled up on my computer, and I thought, “Maybe I should pray.” It's like a satanic book.It's just -- it's evil. Listen to what it says. This is out of chapter 5:18 of the Koran. It's to the Jews and the Christians. The Jews and the Christians say we are the sons of Allah and his beloved ones. Response? Why does he then chastise you for your faults? No. You are mortals from among those whom he created. He forgives whom he pleases and chastises whom he pleases and Allah's is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and what is between them and to them the eventual coming.
Interesting, isn't it? Who does the kingdom belong to according to the Koran? To Allah. What place do the Jews and the Christians have in that kingdom? Zippo. To the children of Israel, this is chapter 17:111 -- this is to the children of Israel -- all praise is due to Allah who has not taken a son. Who's he going after there? Jesus. And who is not a partner of the kingdom? And who is not a helper to save him(Allah), from disgrace and proclaim his greatness magnifying him?
Today there are people all over this world claiming to be fighting and dying for the kingdom of Allah or God. So, when I say this is what Jesus is about, this is the message that Jesus brought to the first century, that he brought and now tells us to proclaim.“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. We need to know what? We need to understand and define it because there are other people saying the same thing, but drastically different implications. Has the kingdom then -- have we allowed it to be robbed from Christianity? Have we allowed it to be tainted by these current religious zealots who are willing to strap bombs on their chest and to enter into a public place and pull the trigger thinking it is for the kingdom of God. Are we going to allow the kingdom of heaven to be tainted by that? I hope your answer is “no”. But if your answer is “no”, we need to be able to define to the watching world what we mean when we say the kingdom of heaven is at hand, therefore,repent.