The Church and the Kingdom
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:
Scripture: Colossians 1:9-14
The kingdom of God is broader than the church - God rules over everything. And yet the church - a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession - are a very important part of the kingdom because they are those God has specially chosen to reign in / through and who, in turn, have chosen to submit to his reign.
So the kingdom of God is especially expressed in and through the church because those are the people God has brought under his reign in calling them to himself. And the Bible is clear that at the end of the day there are only two kingdoms - “the dominion of darkness and…the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Colossians 1:13). And it is only by God’s activity in any one of us that we have been rescued from the one and brought into the other.
The question then becomes: how does the church enjoy and express the reign / kingdom of God? The answer is found throughout the New Testament, the main message of which is concerned with how people live now that God is their king. Hence the teaching of Jesus addresses that, as probably did the 40 days of teaching we don’t have (Acts 1:3), as do the New Testament letters, which explain both the good news of what God has done for us in bringing us into his kingdom.
Just as Jesus has made the invisible God visible, John Calvin said it is the task of the church to make the invisible kingdom visible. Or to put it another way, the role of the church is to pray, “Your kingdom come” and to live in such a way that his reign is on display in our lives - to work and pray that God’s dynamic reign may be increasingly manifest in our lives, families, churches and communities until it is fully and finally known in the new heaven on the new earth.
At times the church has been guilty of hindering the display of God’s kingdom either by a) becoming entangled in sin and in allegiance to the kingdom of this world or b) by withdrawing from the world or sitting in judgement on it while having little salt and light effect upon it.
Application ideas:
In what ways are you (and others) in danger of hindering the display of God’s kingdom by either a) or b) above?
How could we make progress in making the invisible kingdom visible?
What would a church enjoying the reign of God look like?
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