Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Jesus' teaching - vividly illustrated by parables drawn from everyday life - focused on the theme of the kingdom or reign of God. In this message, preached at Greyfriars' Classical Service on 26 April 2009, Rob Yule shows how Jesus' teaching about the kingdom involves a tension between present realisation and future expectation - between what has been achieved in his first coming and what is still to be accomplished at his second coming. Rob shows how this tension characterizes Christian hope and illuminates many ambiguities in our Christian experience.
The kingdom of God was the central theme in Jesus' preaching. He refers to it on more than 60 separate occasions in the three synoptic Gospels. He began his ministry announcing that the Kingdom of God had drawn near: 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.' (Mark 1:1). Many of his most colourful parables have the kingdom of God as their subject. 'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to . . . .' 'The kingdom of heaven is like . . . .'
Three parables recorded in Matthew 13 picture different aspects of the kingdom of God:
The parable of the weeds in the field describes good and evil growing together in the world until the harvest at the end of the age. Only at the end of the age will they finally be separated - the weeds to be burned and the wheat to be gathered into the barn.
This isn't a perfect world. Evil exists in it alongside the good. But the parable suggests that evil exists in the world only with God's permission - and that one day there will be a reckoning, when the weeds are pulled out.
The parable also suggests what conditions will be like towards the end of the age. There will be a revival of evil as well as a revival of goodness. The same climatic conditions that ripen the wheat also ripen the weeds. Don't be surprised or dismayed by the apparent flourishing of evil in our times. This is exactly what Jesus foretold would happen.
The parable of the mustard seed describes how the kingdom of God grows from small and insignificant beginnings (like a tiny mustard seed, a mere speck) to become a large, safe haven for humanity (like a tree birds gather and nest in).
It's easy to be discouraged at how insignificant God's work seems compared with the attractiveness of sport, entertainment, celebrity culture or hedonistic pleasure, but this parable assures us that God's kingdom will one day become something immeasurably great and glorious, a haven where many human beings will find refuge and safety.
The parable of the woman and the leaven looks at the same reality from another point of view: the enormity of the task before God's people, if the leaven of the Gospel is to work its way through the enormous mass of worldliness and transform it into something wholesome. Three measures of flour was about a bushel in volume. That's over 35 litres - almost more than anyone could stir. It would make about a hundred loaves of bread!
The task before us seems immense and daunting - but the Gospel works its influence just as surely as leaven ultimately permeates a large mass of dough.
One common theme unites these three parables. Wheat and weeds growing toward harvest, a mustard seed becoming a tree, leaven working through a large mass of flour - what all three parables describe in common is something which has small, insignificant beginnings, but is slowly growing towards a great conclusion.
That tension - the kingdom of God has already begun, and will one day be fully consummated - characterises all the New Testament teaching about the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is present, yet is still to fully come. It is both present and future. It is 'already' and 'not yet.' It has already been planted, but not yet been harvested. It has already been inaugurated, but is not yet consummated. It has begun with Jesus' first coming, but will not be completed till his second coming.
The New Testament describes four features of this dynamic reality, the kingdom of God:
Jesus shared the Jewish hope for a manifestation of God's rule at the end of history. He taught his followers to pray, 'Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' (Matthew 6:10). He said that 'many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.' (Matthew 8:11). He told his disciples that he would never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when he would drink it new with them in his Father's kingdom (Matthew 26:29).
When interrogated by the high priest Caiaphas at his trial he identified himself with the Son of Man of Daniel's vision, who is exalted to God's throne at the end of the age and given universal dominion as the agent of God's eternal kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14, Matthew 26:64).
But Jesus not only expected a future manifestation of God's reign. In the Jewish society of his day what was unique about Jesus' teaching was that he announced that the Kingdom of God was present in himself and being enacted through his ministry. 'The kingdom of God is at hand', he proclaimed (Mark 1:15, Luke 17:20-21: the Greek, entos humin, meaning 'in your midst', 'among you', not 'within you', as sometimes mistranslated).
Jesus' emphasis on the inbreaking of God's end-time reign in his own person and ministry was a bold innovation. Jewish scholar David Flusser says, 'He is the only Jew of ancient times known to us who preached not only that men were on the threshold of the end of time, but that the new age of salvation had already begun' (Jesus, 3rd. ed., Jerusalem, Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2001, p. 110).
Jesus made it clear that his miracles were signs of the inbreaking of God's Kingdom, a demonstration that God's sovereignty was being reasserted over suffering people and fallen nature.
When John the Baptist sent a message from prison asking whether Jesus was the expected Messiah or not, Jesus replied by quoting Isaiah 35:5-6, 'the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news brought to them.' (Matthew 11:2-6). The implication was clear: his miracles are signs that the expected Messianic kingdom has come.
When his critics accused him of performing miracles in the name of Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, Jesus challenged them with an alternative possibility indicating the divine origin of his works: 'If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.' (Matthew 12:28). Jesus' miracles, and the work of the Holy Spirit today, is evidence of the outworking of God's reign among people and in the natural world.
This last passage indicates a link between the presence of the Kingdom and the activity of the Spirit. Where Jesus spoke of the inbreaking of the reign of God, the early church spoke of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can be described as 'the presence of the future'. Paul calls the Spirit the aparche or 'firstfruits' of the crop, the initial experience of a coming reality (Romans 8:23). He also calls it an arrabon, the 'first instalment', 'down payment', or part of the purchase price paid in advance, which secures legal entitlement to the balance (2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:5, Ephesians 1:13-14).
At the end of the Second World War, French theologian Oscar Cullmann suggested an excellent analogy for the present and future aspects of the kingdom of God (Christ and Time, 1946, 3rd ed., London, SCM Press, 1962, pp. 84, 87).
Like the allied invasion on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, God's kingdom has already invaded our earth with Jesus' first coming. D-Day was the decisive battle of the Second World War on the Western Front, the crucial turning point in its fortunes. Jesus has decisively defeated Satan by his perfect obedience, by his victory over temptation, by his miracles of healing and deliverance, and supremely by his death on the cross.
But Satan, though defeated, is still fighting back, just as some of the bitterest fighting in the Second World War was after the Normandy invasion. VE-Day, Victory in Europe Day, the ultimate victory - was still to come. So it is for us. With the first coming of Jesus D-Day has occurred: the decisive battle has been fought, and God's kingdom has invaded the realm of Satan. But we are still engaged in a fierce struggle with the powers of evil, and we will continue to be until VE-Day - Victory over Evil Day - when Jesus returns at his second coming to consummate his kingdom.
This tension between present and future aspects of the kingdom of God has an important practical implication for us. We live 'between the times', already possessing something of the power and joy of the age to come, but not yet experiencing its full reality.
That is why we experience something of God's healing power when we pray for the sick, but also experience the ambiguity and disappointment of some people not being healed, or being only partially healed. In our present experience we have a wonderful foretaste of the liberty and victory of Jesus over sin and suffering, but we still experience tears, weakness, frailty, weariness, aging, and finally death.
Only with the return of Jesus will we experience the resurrection and the full rejuvenation of our bodies. Only then will tears be wiped away from our eyes, death be ended, and mourning, crying and pain be no more (Revelation 21:4). The kingdom of God, the 'presence of the future', gives us a foretaste of the glory that will be ours in the age to come. This foretaste gives us the hope and courage we need to endure the sufferings and perplexities of this present evil age.
Rob Yule, 26 April 2009
© 2009, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
