Purpose, Power, Prayer - Tim Horman

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning, everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so good to be with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to our first 9 a.m. service we made it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got here, lots of our two morning services.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just want to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone who has,

[SPEAKER_00]: contributed to making this happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a significant effort, but we're here and it's gone as good and he has good things in mind for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as we prepare to jump in to the message this morning, let me pray, want to join me, join with me and pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lloyd, I thank you that we can be here together in your presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: What an incredible, beautiful time of worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have enjoyed already, Father, thank you coming upon us, pouring out your spirit among us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I pray that as we take a moment to look at the words that will go deeper in, deeper into your truth, deeper into your presence,

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we open our hearts to that now Lord, and we pray that this will bless you and glorify you.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus' name, amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to start by reiterating the reason that we are doing this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I'm just going to go back on there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: The heart behind this, the heart behind moving to two morning services was always about trying to make room.

[SPEAKER_00]: Making sure that everyone that God is calling to be part of this community has a space to be able to gather, to worship, to hear the word of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to be the church together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially to make room at the table, that's kind of the metaphor we've been using.

[SPEAKER_00]: You want to make room at the table, the table was getting a bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy, so we've extended the table out of the few more chairs in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I don't mean that in the sense we couldn't have fit more people in the room.

[SPEAKER_00]: We could have put more chairs physically in this space and added more people in, but the challenge has always been access in terms of parking a space in our kids ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: not really the number of chairs in the auditorium and I know that this will take a little while for getting used to especially me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a morning person at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: So getting up an hour earlier to come to church was a bit of a challenge this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm on my third coffee already so but even with this change and even if we will take us a while to get used to it the heart has always been hard behind it has always been one of hospitality and participation

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I can tell you why we are not doing this.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not doing this because we have any desire to build the kingdom of one church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to say this right at the outset at the beginning of this new season for us in 2026.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's only one kingdom that we want to promote and there's only one person that we want to exalt.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's only one king and one kingdom as Paul declares in Philippians 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: That because of what he suffered because he willingly laid down his life for us, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name.

[SPEAKER_00]: that at his name every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and King to the glory of God the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is what we want to preach here at one, always only and forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, the Savior and Redeemer of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, our great, high priest forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, our ransom and our reconciler.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, who is the only one worthy of our worship and devotion?

[SPEAKER_00]: because Christ Jesus who calls us to be with Him and to learn from Him, who fills us with His spirit and with power, who adopts us into a new family and makes us a new humanity, who sends us on mission together to make disciples, who appoints us to be ambassadors in His kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a dimension in which all people are given the dignity to participate in accordance with their gifts in the work of his redemptive love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Friends, that's what we want to be about here at one.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's our dream to see everyone who is part of this church experiencing the reality of what's just been described on the screen there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love how Richard Lovelace in his book The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life puts this very succinctly that to be a disciple of Jesus means that you are accepted.

[SPEAKER_00]: that you are delivered, that you are not alone, and that you have authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say that again, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, you are accepted, you are delivered, you are not alone, and you have authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then, has anyone told you the good news?

[SPEAKER_00]: The very first words that Jesus speaks in the gospel of Mark, verse 14 and 15, the very first words that Jesus speaks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The time has come, he said.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or the time has come, or the time has been fulfilled.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God is near, or now is the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The rule and reign of God have come close.

[SPEAKER_00]: So broken in upon the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Repent, that is, stop whatever you were doing and pay attention to this and believe, believe and enter as some translations put it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Repent and enter the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, over these last few weeks, we have been exploring some of Jesus' parables about the kingdom of God together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And next week, as has been mentioned already, we're starting a new series on the Lord's Prayer, which I believe is one of the most important and powerful prayers that we can pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it includes within it one of the most important and powerful requests that we can ever make of God, which is your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the kingdom of God is a pretty important idea in the Scriptures.

[SPEAKER_00]: It occurs right throughout the Scriptures.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, this idea of God's kingdom at work in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the gospels alone, it is mentioned by Jesus, I think, a hundred times, a hundred odd times in his preaching and teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is by far the most,

[SPEAKER_00]: Frequently mentioned topic in all of Jesus' teaching and preaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the next thing that Jesus speaks about most often, occurring half as many times, about 50 or so, is God as father.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the kingdom of God, 100 times, God as father, about 50 times.

[SPEAKER_00]: So more than love, more than faith, more than forgiveness, more than righteousness, more than justice.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God is the central idea in all of Jesus' teaching and preaching and ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, I think we need to pay attention to this, because it could just be the most important and urgent idea that he wants us to try our best to understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't just mean understand it intellectually.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean for us to understand it and enter into it, to live into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why we're going to spend some time this morning with this question or with this topic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to ask you three questions along these lines when we think about the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why does it matter?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then how do we experience it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So why does it matter?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is it and how do we experience it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we ready?

[SPEAKER_00]: Turn to the person next to you and say I'm ready.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me say it matters because if it is the central idea in Jesus' ministry, it's therefore essential for us to try and understand if we want to understand what the gospel even is.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for many of us, the gospel goes something like this, like if I was to ask the average believer in the West anyway, what's the gospel?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell me the gospel?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they might say something like this as described by Scott McKnight in his book The King Jesus Gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though, created in God's image, you were actually born into Adam's sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the fall and stand eternally guilty before God, which means eternal punishment after death.

[SPEAKER_00]: But because God loves you, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for you on the cross, where He absorbed the punishment for sin on your behalf.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you turn to Jesus and trust Him for your salvation, you will be rescued from eternal punishment and experience eternity in heaven in the presence of God and the saints, but great cloud of witnesses.

[SPEAKER_00]: So does that sound familiar to you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I see a show of hands?

[SPEAKER_00]: Does that sound, come on guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody here?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that sounds pretty familiar.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's sometimes called the gospel of personal salvation or the Billy Graham gospel for those of you who know who Billy Graham is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or for many people, this just simply is the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you say, what is the gospel?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they'll tell you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, oops, pardon me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that it's wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, in fact, I'm deeply thankful for Billy Graham, for example, because without his preaching my parents would not have come to Christ and I may not be a Christian.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying though is that this is incomplete, it leaves out some really, really important things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it has nothing to say, for example, about evil, like personal or global or systemic evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no mention of the evil one, the Satan involved here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says nothing about justice or social transformation or caring for the poor, or even the central command that we're given, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty important to Jesus, but see him odd that we wouldn't include that in our preaching of the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has nothing to say about creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in this version, it feels like what it's indicating as if the whole point is to kind of get out of this world, to escape this world, does God not care about the world that He's made.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says nothing about discipleship, you know, the implication here is I put my faith in Jesus and you know, bam, I'm saved, I'm off to heaven, awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now what?

[SPEAKER_00]: What do I do in the in between time?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it has nothing to say about the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: If salvation is personal, then do I really need other believers in my life?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I really need to participate in Christian community in order to follow Jesus?

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, the gospel of the kingdom of God matters because Jesus actually did not come to preach a message of personal salvation that by faith in Jesus our sins are forgiven through the cross so we get to go to heaven when we die and I'm not saying that's wrong, what I'm saying is that it's inadequate and the focus is in the wrong place.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this version of the gospel, this personal salvation gospel, the focus is forgiveness.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, justification by faith, by faith in Christ, I'm justified of my sins, I'm forgiven of my sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: Forgiveness is, of course, a beautiful and crucial part of this amazing story that we're in.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for Jesus, it's not the main thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Forgiveness is actually the result of something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what is the main thing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, let me ask you this morning, what is the gospel that Jesus Himself preached?

[SPEAKER_00]: According to Mark 115, and in over 100 other occasions, in the gospels, and that's to say nothing of the rest of the New Testament, all the old, Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven as Matthew puts it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the good news that Jesus preached, because it is the good news that Jesus is, that in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, God is reclaiming His rightful kingship over the world, or in Christ Jesus, God is reestablishing His right to reign and to rule as King over all creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, reclaiming it from what or from whom will explore further in the Lord's prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what is God's kingdom then?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's ask a really simple question.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is God's kingdom?

[SPEAKER_00]: God's kingdom is the domain of His kingship.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's where God reigns as king.

[SPEAKER_00]: That seems very simple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, for most of us, the royal family is something that we give roughly zero time thinking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: And living in a democracy, as we do, means that much of this language like kings, kingship, rain, rule, consume old fashioned out of place somewhat irrelevant.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, for most of history, people living under the rule of some king or queen or other was pretty much taken for granted, because that's just how all nations were governed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it forms obviously a massive part of the background to the Scriptures, to the Old Testament, and to the new, and particularly for people living in the time of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of their hopes for a Messiah, one of the key promises about the Messiah was that he would be a new King David.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there was the focus was all about God re-establishing His kingship and His kingdom over Israel, and then through Israel, across the whole earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: So starting with creation, where God created us to have dominion on earth as His image bearers, it was only ever intended to work under His rule.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as long as we worked with Him, walked together with Him or under Him, under His authority, everything would remain peaceful and in a state of blessing and shalom.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the fall, which was really a rejection of God's reign over us, his rule over us, I mean, that was the sin that they committed.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to be their own gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to be their own kings.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't want to have to exist under God's authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't want to live under God's rule.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we get to the Exodus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the rescue of Israel out of slavery in Egypt so that God could make them his own special people, his own nation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if you remember, there's a really important detail in how God wanted to govern his people.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't want them to have a king like all the other nations because he himself would be their king.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he said.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will be your king.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll rule over you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will live under my reign.

[SPEAKER_00]: which was God's promise to Abraham, but that was not what Israel wanted, they rejected that arrangement, and they wanted a human king over them, and we know how that ended, what ended with them going off into exile in Babylon.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, Christ Jesus comes into this world to reclaim God's kingship over all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: This time, as both God and human, as one who unites heaven and earth, the human and the divine.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order to establish God's kingdom, not just from out of heaven, but now on the earth, as we pray in the Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: The whole point of Christ's coming was to unite heaven and earth to bring God's kingship to bear in the world, through someone who was both God and human, to bring those two realities together, and therefore, as Paul will say in Colossians, to reconcile all things to God through Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: through the cross, which, of course, includes forgiveness.

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, justification.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, let's read one, Colossians 1.

[SPEAKER_00]: The son is the image of the invisible God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first born overall creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: For in him, all things were created.

[SPEAKER_00]: Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, with a thrones or powers or rulers or authorities to pull taking us all the way back to creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: All things have been created through him and for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's before all things and in him, all things hold together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he is the head of the body, the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the beginning and the first born from among the dead, so that in everything, he might have the supremacy that he might rule and reign.

[SPEAKER_00]: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself, all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: To put it really simply, Paul is saying that Christ coming into the world was so that Jesus could reclaim what was lost in the very beginning through the fall, which is not just to save one part of our lives that we call our soul or our heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not only just concerned with forgiving our sins so that we can go to heaven when we die as important as all that is.

[SPEAKER_00]: as Paul says, all things, all things to reconcile all things to God through the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means everything in all creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Christ has come to reclaim, as the world's rightful true and only king and ruler.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that is something that was started in Christ at His coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was accomplished through his death and resurrection and ascension, which by the way, his ascension, which we don't talk about all that much, is intended to be understood as his coronation day.

[SPEAKER_00]: The day he claims the title, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was accomplished through his death resurrection and ascension and it will be completed when he comes again as Revelation 21 says when he will restore and renew all things there it is again all things all things in creation all things in heaven and earth not just our souls not just our hearts

[SPEAKER_00]: not just our personal salvation but everything, everything that was lost, everything that was damaged by the fall will be redeemed, everything that has been torn away from relationship with God will be reconciled to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the theologian Abraham Kaper puts it, the gospel of the kingdom means that there is not a single square inch in the whole domain of human existence, including

[SPEAKER_00]: That is mine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the gospel friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, let me ask you a question.

[SPEAKER_00]: If God's kingdom means where God's God reigns as king, where He rules as king, then okay, then where does God rule and reign as king, exactly?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because, about you last time I looked, there was no obvious throne that God is sitting on.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no palace that God inhabits, no physical kingdom or nation that we can say is God's territory.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know as much as many nations throughout history and even today might want to claim that for themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet this world still today seems like very much a hurting and broken and violent place.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know about you at every time I read the news.

[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like there's some new devastating horrible thing going on somewhere in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if Christ is truly king, then where is His kingdom exactly?

[SPEAKER_00]: On the offer course, which we mentioned earlier, we tell this story, we tell the story of this man,

[SPEAKER_00]: father, Maximilian Colby, who was a Polish Catholic priest, who was arrested and imprisoned put in a concentration camp by the Nazis in World War II.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now after a failed attempt, escaped by one of his fellow inmates, not by Maximilian, but one of his fellow inmates who tried to escape.

[SPEAKER_00]: As punishment, the guards ordered that ten men were to be chosen at random and executed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of those men chosen to be killed pleaded for mercy because he said he had a wife and children who had not been arrested.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he pleaded for his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Father Colby was so moved by this that he volunteered to die in this man's place, which the guards accepted.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he was killed on August 14, 1941 by lethal injection.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see, this doesn't look very much like any kingdom that we would recognize.

[SPEAKER_00]: But let me tell you, that man's sacrifice is a sign of the presence of God's kingdom on earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because friends, even in the worst of places, even hell on earth, a man can be so moved by love and compassion that is willing to live and even to die as Christ did

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we have mission partners that we support in Cambodia who go their ministry is called hard places and they go into hard places to rescue children out of sex slavery.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's about as hellish a situation as I can imagine for those children as bad as any concentration camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: And disciples of Jesus,

[SPEAKER_00]: go to those places, even if it's inconvenient, even if it's dangerous, because they know that the task of Jesus disciples is to enter His kingdom to recognize the great treasure that it is and to give their whole lives to taking hold of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to enter it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they also know that it's not this there to be enjoyed for their own sake, for their own joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the call of those who live in God's kingdom is to make sure that the places in this world that are manifestly evil, where it appears that Christ does not yet reign, that such places and the people in them

[SPEAKER_00]: can be transformed and can be redeemed by disciples prepared to be the presence of the kingdom and of its king and to bring the reign of King Jesus into those places and wherever it is needed.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is where the kingdom of God reveals itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the presence of the kingdom in this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I get an amen to that?

[SPEAKER_00]: You see, I think one of the reasons we have such a hard time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Understanding what God's kingdom means is because we are so used to thinking about power as something that belongs to those who wield it over others.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know those with the biggest empire, those with the biggest guns, the biggest military, the most money, the most political influence, those who can use violence and coercion to crush

[SPEAKER_00]: In our world, we think now that is true power.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you, friends, the kingship of Jesus and the kingdom of Jesus turns all of that on its head because the kingdom of God is not like the kingdoms of this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, buying into the world's narrative of power is a mistake that we Christians have been guilty of too many times.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think too often our political engagement has been something like, we need to have power in government

[SPEAKER_00]: in order to win the country for Christ or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus never told us to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never told us to pursue that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Friends, we do not need political control in order to be faithful citizens of God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I give an amen to that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that has been granted to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus and by the powering presence of His Spirit and nothing, no government on this planet

[SPEAKER_00]: No adverse laws, no prison sentences, no persecution, not even death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even death is a defeated foe in God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we prayed for Iran earlier, and the people who study these things are saying that based on that research, it appears that the church in Iran is the fastest growing church on the planet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been true, they have said, I don't have the data on this, but they've said this has been true of China as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: In two places where it's effectively illegal, life threatening to be a follower of Jesus, is other two places on this planet where the church is growing the fastest.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need the government to be on our side in order for the church to flourish.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, does it help?

[SPEAKER_00]: Does it help if we have a favorable government?

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course it does.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we pray for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a warning here too, because we could also argue that historically, when the church has been most comfortable in the halls of political power, the church has been at its weakest and it's least faithful to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: The government, the nation, the political realm, none of those things are the same thing as the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because Jesus did not come to validate one form of government over another.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus came to establish an entirely different kind of kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we know that many in Israel wanted the Messiah to be a political military leader.

[SPEAKER_00]: To drive out the Romans at the edge of the sword.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what did Jesus say about that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not come to be served but to serve.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to give my life as a ransom for many, for the liberation of others and they killed him for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he knew the truth, as he said to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world and praise God for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus didn't come into this world to be another Caesar, you know, ruling from the top down, forcing people to bow the knee, using intimidation or the threat of violence.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, Jesus came among us to lead us, to teach us, to liberate us from the bottom up.

[SPEAKER_00]: in weakness, in humility, in grace, and with self-sacrificial love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Recent Nick Cave response to a question on the Red Hand files was brilliant.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of his readers asked, is religion not the refuge of the week?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is J.L.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is precisely that Christianity in particular.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the kingdom of God, God's throne is across His crown, a crown of thorns, is a sign of His mercy.

[SPEAKER_00]: His victory is not the defeat of His enemies, but the resurrection from the dead, and His promise to all of us is the renewal of all things, everything in all creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, friends, that is true power.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is true power.

[SPEAKER_00]: Power wielded to raise up the powerless, to heal the sick, to save sinners.

[SPEAKER_00]: But also power to have the courage, like Maximilian Colby, to confront evil, to go into the darkest places, and to trust that even there Christ has the victory, that

[SPEAKER_00]: Kipel was right, there is not one square inch on this planet that Jesus does not say that is mine and if we have the courage and the faith to go with him there, we will see him do impossible things.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Dain Orton says, Jesus Christ's earthly ministry was one of giving back to one deserving sinners their humanity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why in Mark's gospel, immediately after this pronouncement by Jesus that the kingdom of God has come, he then demonstrates us to demonstrate to us what it looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: In quick succession, he calls disciples to follow him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He teaches with authority and the people are amazed.

[SPEAKER_00]: He delivers a man from an unclean spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: He heals many sick people.

[SPEAKER_00]: He goes off by himself to seek the father in prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He heals a man of leprosy and restores him to community.

[SPEAKER_00]: He forgives the sins of the paralyzed man and then heals him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He eats with tax collectors and sinners.

[SPEAKER_00]: He teaches a new law, not the law of Moses, but one that's defined around himself as Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is just in the first two chapters of Mark.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's showing us, this is the pronouncement of the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the preaching of the kingdom of God, and then this is what it looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the presence of the kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: So where is the kingdom of God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where is it friends?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's wherever we see Jesus doing those kinds of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's when we're seeing God's kingdom at work.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now we can say,

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not just Jesus doing those things, he now works through his church, he's people in the power of the Holy Spirit, because we are now citizens of heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are now now co-laborers with Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are now ambassadors of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have now been filled with the same spirit that empowered Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's wherever we see God's people, you and I, doing those kinds of things as well in whatever context God has placed us, that's where we see the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the mission of the church, as expressed by the great misogologist, Leslie Newbigan, the basis of mission is nothing less than this, the kingdom of God, the sovereign rule of Jesus, over all humanity, and over all creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: mission is the proclamation of the kingdom and the presence of the kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church by inviting all people to share in the mystery of the presence of the kingdom, hidden in its life through its union with the crucified and risen life of Jesus, acts out the love of Jesus that took him to the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: by a bidently following where the Spirit leads.

[SPEAKER_00]: Often in ways neither planned nor known, nor understood, the church lives out the hope that is given by the presence of the Spirit who is the living foretaste of the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just close your eyes with me for a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just imagine for a moment what it might look like in your life or in our church, across our whole church community for us to be seeing these things happen, for us to be seeing the kingdom of God manifest in these ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just take a minute to pray for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ask the Father to pour out His Spirit on us a fresh so that we can live into these things, so that we together as a church can't, you know, won't just be able to say, hey, we had a nice service, but we'll be able to say together today, we experienced a living foretaste of the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I want.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what you want?

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on now.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we do that together, as we pursue this for 2026,

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we'll be able to help, but see the kinds of things that Jesus did, happening here among us, if we're prepared by faith to ask the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm praying for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I invite you, especially as we enter this new season in the Lord's Prayer on the run up to Lent, I encourage you, which is not far away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lent is coming, I think, a couple of weeks away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I encourage you to dig in and prayer with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's use this season as a time to ask,

[SPEAKER_00]: The Father to do in and through us by His Spirit, what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's prayer, and what we see Him doing in His own ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, we're not all gonna do the ministry of Jesus in its totality, but that's the point of the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've all been filled with the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have different gifts, different callings, and we have different ministries, and that means that each one of you has a different way of manifesting the kingdom in your own life in whatever context God has placed you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so whatever you might have a measure of faith for, to pray for, to believe for, then I encourage you to dig into that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is really why we're going to sit in the Lord's prayer over these next few weeks so that we can do that together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if I've got this kingdom of God's theology right, and I hope I have, what it means is church, what it means is that

[SPEAKER_00]: Wherever you are, no matter what is going on, if you are in Christ, then Jesus is with you in every situation, in every place, raining and ruling there as king.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that means you don't need to be afraid.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to be afraid.

[SPEAKER_00]: And secondly, you don't have to have it all figured out.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to understand all mysteries in order to be an effective minister of the gospel to do what Jesus has called you to do because he's there with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he will give you what you need.

[SPEAKER_00]: He will help you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He will guide you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just be like him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I encourage you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Be like Him in your radical dependence on the Spirit's power and on your devotion to your Father in heaven in prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we see Jesus doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was the source of His ability to be the presence of the kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: His dependence on the Spirit's power and his devotion to his father and heaven in prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you see, even though we use this kind of language, nowhere in the New Testament, actually, are we told to build the kingdom?

[SPEAKER_00]: to advance the kingdom, or to a stub.

[SPEAKER_00]: I looked at this once, I could not find a single example in the New Testament where we are commanded to build the kingdom of God, to advance the kingdom of God, or to establish the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I know we pray like that, and I know what we mean when we pray that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to mean here about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just simply saying that we're not actually told or asked to in the New Testament, pray those things, or even believe those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: because Jesus has done all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Already, he has established his kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is advancing his kingdom, and he is building his kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as it says, I will build my church, I'll build my kingdom, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

[SPEAKER_00]: All we are called to do, the one thing we are called to do, is enter the kingdom and live in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that means you don't have to advance it anywhere because wherever you go, the kingdom of God is present.

[SPEAKER_00]: They meant to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what we mean when we talk about living in the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have four values as a church that we have written up, or really, we've taken them from the New Testament, in order for us to understand how we want to do that here as at one.

[SPEAKER_00]: How we want to be men and women who are living in the kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here are our four values as a church that we want to be a renewed humanity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just experiencing the church as Jesus intended it, as a multi-ethnic, multi-generational community where everyone has valued and everyone has a place to belong.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to be a people of the Holy Spirit, trusting as Jesus did in the empowering presence of the Spirit in Word and Spirit seeing God express His gifts through the whole body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to be a church of disciples, because that's what the kingdom of God is all about, the preaching of the kingdom, the preaching of the gospel is about inviting people to come and enter the kingdom with us and experience its benefits and its blessing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we want to be making disciples calling others to grow in love and obedience to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, we want to be a priesthood of all believers because we believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: that the church is called to do this together.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about the superstars, the heroes, the anointed ones.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of us are empowered.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of us have been gifted.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of us have been called.

[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, all of us are invited to participate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we want to be a priesthood of all believers where everyone is learning how to use the gifts that they've been given to be ambassadors of God wherever they have been placed.

[SPEAKER_00]: by God.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's our vision, that's our dream.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to invite the band to come on up and I invite you to stand with me as we pray for this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please join with me and pray on open up your hearts and your hands to our Father in heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you're thinking this morning that there's a context in your life, a place in your life where it appears that Jesus is not present, that he's not ruling and reigning, but you can't see the signs of his kingship in whatever that might be that you are struggling with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is why we do pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're invited to be those who bring that promise to wherever God has placed us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's ask now, Holy Spirit, come and fill your people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Strengthen us, encourage us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to see where you're at work, how you are advancing your kingdom, how you are building your kingdom, how you are establishing your kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to see those things Lord Jesus, give us the eyes of the Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus, we thank you that you've invited all of us to enter your kingdom and to swear allegiance to you as our king.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to take a moment just to do that afresh.

[SPEAKER_00]: to name you as our King of Kings in Lord of Lords, and to submit our lives to you, or Jesus, to lay down our lives for you just as you lay down your life for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: To come Holy Spirit, refresh us, renew us, revive us, encourage us, strengthen us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Help us Lord, not to be afraid of weakness,

[SPEAKER_00]: But to know that, you know, weakness, your strength has made perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe we feel weak at the moment, maybe we feel faithless.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we feel that this calling is too much for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, and that's why Lord Jesus, we want to continue to honour you, to worship you, to live under your rule and your reign.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I pray then that wherever we go as we do this, wherever we go, we will see your presence and power at work.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see it in our families, we'll see it in our relationships, we'll see it in our workplaces, wherever we go Lord Jesus, we'll see you do what only you can do through us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We open ourselves up to that, come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, amen and amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are going to finish our service.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're singing together one last time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's lift our voices to our King of Kings and Lord of Lords and give Jesus the worship that is due his awesome and powerful name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.