A Clash of Kingdoms
About this series:
Throughout 2023 all our teaching series will be looking at The Kingdom Of God. The essential goal is to help people understand the Bible’s teaching on the kingdom of God and raise confidence in God’s plans for his kingdom’s expansion / multiplication.
Our first series on the kingdom starts with an introduction to the king and his kingdom and then develops that biblical theme from the establishing of God's kingdom in creation to his choosing of a special people who would be set apart for him, how God's kingdom clashes with that of the world and the choices we therefore have to make, how we're to be a blessing while we live in the world but not of it, the promise of a coming anointed king bringing to reality the rule of God in / through the life of his people, the coming of the kingdom in a new way in Jesus as promised in the OT, what Jesus expected life in the kingdom of God to look like, what Jesus taught about the kingdom in parables, how the church relates to the kingdom and the future kingdom.
Preaching about The Kingdom Of God is a great way to address life as a church community - this is how life together under God’s reign should look like. And to address our lives in the world - demonstrating to those in our sphere of influence the reality of God and what life looks like when God is your king.
About this talk:
In calling a people to specially belong to him, God set his people on a collision course with the surrounding nations. Israel’s job was to stand firm in loyalty to God in the face of every other god; to not conform to the other kingdoms but retain their distinctiveness as the people of God. And yet they consistently failed to do so, either forgetting God altogether or mixing their loyalties.
Daniel, deported to Babylon around 600BC, stands out as one who stood up for the kingdom of God under enormous pressure from king Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom. Given a new name, Belteshazzar, he refused to eat or live as the people of the kingdom he’d been taken to, refused to bow down to the gold image of Nebuchadnezzar, refused to give up praying to God - all under extreme pressure to conform to the ways of the Babylonians and the word of their king. He remains a magnificent example of living under the reign of God in the clash of kingdoms we too experience.
Old Testament expectation was that when the Messiah came he would transform everything and establish the people of God under the reign of God once and for all, banishing evil in the process. And yet, in one of so many ways in which he confounded expectations, Jesus the Messiah did not banish evil and the kingdom of the world when he came. He decisively defeated Satan, but did not banish him - not yet!
So the parables about the kingdom in Matthew 13 (the parables of the sower, the weeds, the yeast, the mustard seed and the net) show two kingdoms living side-by-side until a future decisive elimination of evil. The clash of kingdoms was not ended by the Messiah’s coming, but continues until his return. Until then, God’s people are engaged in a battle to remain loyal to the King and committed to establishing his kingdom above all others.
This clash and ultimate defeat of other kingdoms is expressed prophetically in Daniel 2 with God’s reign ultimately triumphing over all others - “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure for ever” (v 44).
Application ideas:
What lessons can we learn from Daniel’s courageous example?
In what ways does the kingdom of this world seek to reign in our lives?
Give some examples (including personal ones) of where you’ve found this clash of kingdoms to be most challenging.
Audio only
