We are Citizens of the Kingdom of God: Matthew 1 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You're going to hear me say in the weeks ahead that the key to kingdom joy, righteousness, peace, and power is who lord over your life.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Someone asked me the other day, when did you kind of get captivated by the whole concept of the kingdom of God?

And you know what it was?

It was in 1985.

In 1985, I was a missionary in Japan and I read a little book called The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person by a Methodist missionary from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s by E.

Stanley Jones.

It was kind of his magnum opus, and I got captivated by it then.

But I've never taught on it.

I've got theological degrees, and I've never heard a course on the kingdom of God, and yet, men and women, it was the main message of Jesus.

He spoke about the kingdom of God a hundred times, over a hundred times in his ministry.

All of the major teachings of Jesus in front of large crowds were about the kingdom of God.

Almost all of the parables are given as a teaching, as an illustration, as a metaphor of the kingdom of God, and yet there's no courses in any of our seminaries on the kingdom of God.

My favorite systematic theology is by Wayne Grutham.

Systematic theology is a friend of mine.

I love his stuff.

Nothing on the kingdom of God.

I was studying it last night.

George Elton Ladd, one of the great theologues from Fuller Seminary, where I went to seminary, wrote a book on the theology of the New Testament, and he covers it well.

But other than George Elton Ladd, very little out there specifically on the kingdom of God.

It's referenced in different places.

So I want to talk about a Kingdom of God revolution from the Gospel of Matthew.

And I'm choosing Matthew for some various reasons that I'll unpack in a second.

But let me begin with this.

The idea of kingdom is really hard for us as Americans.

It's really hard for most of the world, and I think it's one of the reasons why it's been bypassed.

Because we have a president, we have a prime minister, we have Congress.

We vote them in, and praise God, we vote them out.

But a kingdom has a king.

A king cannot be voted in, and a king cannot be voted out.

A king is born into his kingship.

Matter of fact, as citizens of the king, you don't vote yourself in, but you're born into the kingdom.

The Bible is all about kingdom.

One particular author said he believes from Genesis to Revelation, the whole book is about the kingdom of God.

I don't know if I agree completely with that, but we know in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus' whole ministry was about the kingdom of God.

The Bible calls God, this is where this comes from, the King of Gory.

The King of Glory.

God is called the ancient of days, the ancient of kings, the king, capital K of all kings.

And that his kingdom is heaven and earth.

And we don't get to vote about the laws and the ethics and the rules of his kingdom.

No king gets opinions from his citizens.

The king's will, the king's sovereignty, and the king's rule decides everything.

He's called the first king, the king of all kings, and each one of you are a king.

You're called in scripture a priest and king.

So when we say he's the king of all kings on an earth that doesn't have many kings anymore, guess what he's talking about?

He's the king over all of us as his citizens who are small K kings on the earth.

Every kingdom has a constitution.

This is the kingdom of God constitution.

I didn't get to vote on what's in this book, and neither did you.

But this is the laws and the ethics and the keys of the kingdom.

This book.

So it made sense to me in praying and thinking and researching about the kingdom that we have to start with one of the books that's in the Constitution of the Kingdom.

And so we're going to study Matthew.

The gospel of Matthew is all about the kingdom of God.

Some of you know, raise your hand if you know what the what I mean by the Synoptic Gospels.

Okay.

Man, we got a smart church.

We're a smart church.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels.

We believe that Matthew and Luke gained their most insight in writing their gospels from the first gospel, which was the Gospel of Mark, which is the shortest gospel, the simplest gospel.

But Matthew mentions the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God 32 times more than any of the synoptic gospels, more than the Gospel of John.

The focus of Matthew were Jews.

Matthew was a Jew.

He was an IRS agent of the Romans.

He was a tax collector.

Seems like he was a wealthy tax collector and possibly pretty educated.

He's writing Matthew to unbelieving Jews.

He's writing Matthew to Jews who believed that a Messiah, a king, was coming from the prophetic words that were found in what we now classically call the Old Testament, Genesis to Malachi, the scriptures of Israel at that time.

And in beginning to frame a book or a genealogy or a testament of this king, what we're going to see is that Matthew looks at the Messianic prophecies differently than the Jews did.

So the Jews were looking for a political savior.

They were looking for a king not unlike David, who is going to usurp the power of the Roman kingdom, the Roman emperor, and bring back the freedom that they had once known under King David.

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

And what Matthew's going to do, obviously, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, is masterful.

It is masterful how he begins the first chapter.

Because what Matthew is trying to do is find that common ground with the Jews of their view of a king and a kingdom, but he's going to pick verses from the Old Testament that the Jews were not choosing.

Instead of the messianic passages that the Jews were using of a conquering king, he's going to begin to introduce a suffering servant king.

And all through Matthew, he's going to do that.

But he has to win the day with this idea of Jesus being a king, church.

This is really important.

Because he starts off with a legal, he's going to do two things in chapter one.

And all of you know, you should know, or you now will know, that when Matthew wrote the gospel, he didn't have chapters and verses.

That came later.

So think about the flow here, the flow he's taking us through.

And he's going to begin with a legal claim.

A legal claim to Jesus being a king.

And he's going to give us two things in chapter one, and that's all we're going to cover.

Two aspects.

Number one is a royal line, that Jesus came from a royal line, which is really important in kingship.

Remember, kings are not voted in, kings are born into.

Their genealogy is everything as far as them being able to be a king over a kingdom.

And then secondly, he's going to talk about prophetic significance from the Old Testament scriptures, which meant a lot to the Jews, which was important to the Jews.

It was key to the Jews understanding the idea of a Messiah king.

So he starts off, and I'm not going to go through the whole genealogy.

Everybody's probably looking at that going, is he going to read all of those names?

No, I'm not.

I've got too many other things to cover here.

But let's just start at the very beginning.

Look at verse 1.

The book or the testament of the genealogy, or we could say the royal line of Jesus Christ, and you know Christ is not his last name.

So if you had, you know, if you had Jesus' phone number, you might put it under C.

No.

Christ means the anointed one.

Jesus, the anointed one.

How important is that if you're presenting a king and a kingdom that he's anointed?

Remember, we just went through worshiper warrior on the life of David.

He was anointed by Samuel.

Before him, Saul, the first king of Israel, anointed by Samuel with oil.

So this anointing, he's saying, look, this is Jesus the anointed one.

He's saying to a Jewish readership, oh, he's a king, only kings.

Get anointed.

This is Jesus the Christ, Jesus the anointed one, the son of David.

Church, to a Jew, you could not more directly connect the kingship of Jesus than calling upon the fact that he's of the genealogy, he's of the royal line of the greatest king in Israel, making him the son of David.

And every Pharisee, every Sadducee, every scribe would have known that the Messiah is a son of David.

Then he says, son of Abraham.

Son of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish race, the founder of Judaism, the founder of the ethnicity as well as the religion of the Jews.

Masterful by Matthew.

But here's what's also masterful, and they don't know this yet, because they're just starting to read the letter.

The way he's going to describe himself as the son of David as Jesus speaks.

Remember what the scriptures say?

The scriptures say the government shall be upon his shoulders.

Today we don't have time to get into it.

There's so many aspects of the kingdom.

I'm just going to give you a brief overview, but we are going to cover in the weeks ahead what it means for the kingdom being defined as a government.

It's a government.

Men and women, kingdoms are governments.

When we talk about the seven spheres of influence, one of the things you're going to hear me say is the government of education, the government of media, the government of civic political government, the government of business, because government speaks of governing.

And I'm going to give you in a moment the definition that I've come up with on the kingdom of God.

And it has to do with governing.

So the government was upon the son of David.

The government was upon his shoulders.

It's the prediction of the Messiah, is the prophetic word of the Messiah.

Abraham.

Abraham.

The father of what?

Many nations.

Many nations.

You see, for the Jew at that time, church, they were looking for a Messiah and a king of the Jews and Palestine.

We're about to read Matthew describing this Messiah king for all nations.

And then he goes through the genealogy, goes through the royal line.

Look at verse 16.

Verse 16.

And Jacob begot Joseph.

This is important.

Underline it, highlight it, bracket it, circle it.

The husband of Mary.

It does not say the Father of Jesus.

The husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ or the anointed one.

This is really important in just a moment because we're going to look at the prophetic significance in the next few verses.

But he's saying, look, he is not, his seed was not from man, his seed was from the Holy Spirit.

His seed is from God.

He's fully God.

Men and women, this is really important.

If you come out of any kind of denominational or theological backgrounds where there's been battles over the virgin birth, the virginity of Mary is huge.

People say, ah, you know, and I've read some of the great pastors of our time.

Oh, that's not that important.

That is huge, men and women.

Because if you take away the virginity of Mary in the birth of Jesus, you take away his deity.

Because his deity came from the seed of God.

In Mary through a conception of the Holy Spirit.

So he gives us a royal line.

Secondly, look at verse 18.

Now, after the birth of Jesus Christ, again the anointed one, was as follows.

After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.

So fully man, fully God.

Fully man coming forth from Mary, but the seed of the Holy Spirit, fully God.

Fully man and fully God.

Isn't that exciting?

So right at the beginning, Matthew's trying to communicate.

This is a different kind of king, gang.

This is a different kind of king.

This is a king that's going to be fully man and fully God.

You go, I can't even wrap my head around that.

I'll just say this: a little head start into something we'll talk about in the days ahead, is that the currency of the kingdom.

What's the currency of the kingdom?

The currency in American society is dollars and cents.

The currency of the kingdom is faith working through love with discernment.

Faith working through love with discernment.

It takes faith working through love with discernment to understand what I'm talking about.

Fully God and fully man.

Now, this birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

After the mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.

Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.

Now, let's just stop for a moment.

Nazareth at that time only had 400 people.

So she, what we believe happened is that when she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, Mary went to be with her relative, Elizabeth.

Remember, Elizabeth is pregnant with what will become John the Baptist.

And so remember how the baby leaps in her womb as she greets Mary.

What's interesting is that Mary had to still go back home.

So by the time she came back to Nazareth, she's fully pregnant.

400 people in the village, about 75 families, that's controversial stuff.

That's controversial.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you were conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

So here's what I love about this.

Matthew's so gritty.

Matthew's so realistic.

Matthew is giving a different kind of king.

Gang, there's no palace here.

There's no royal family.

This is a peasant girl marrying a carpenter in a dinky little town of Nazareth.

400 families, not even big then.

And still to this day, a very, very small town in Israel.

He is painting a different kind of Messiah, men and women.

He's painting a different kind of king.

Verse 21.

She will bring forth a son.

She'll call his name Jesus.

And here's one of the first descriptions of who he is.

He will save his people from their sins.

So all this was done.

So, and this is now we're getting into the prophetic, and we'll get into this next time in chapter 2 again.

This was done that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.

And he's going to quote Isaiah, one of the great prophets of Israel.

Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, God with us, a different kind of king, a different kind of Messiah.

Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, and he did not know her.

He did not have sexual relations with her, is what he means here, till she had brought forth her firstborn son and called his name Jesus.

So that's the opening.

Fantastic opening.

Royal line of a king, messianic prophecies of the king, prophetic significance of the king, anointed as a king, of the son of David, the greatest king of Israel, of the son of Abraham, the greatest leader, the greatest originator to Israel, to the Jews at that time, Abraham.

So that's the strategic nature in which Matthew begins.

Let's progress with a definition of the kingdom of God.

I want to give us a definition which we'll visit many, many times in the weeks to come.

A definition of the kingdom of God.

Let me just say every author, every theologist, Every writer that I studied had a different definition.

So this is the Steve Holt definition.

You go, well, that's that's not very esteeming.

And you go, that's right, that's just one I'm gonna use, okay?

So I think it's a combination of a bunch of these.

Let me give you a definition of the kingdom of God.

Kingdom.

I'm not real smart, I'm from Georgia.

Kingdom.

Kingdom.

Same word in the Latin is where we get the word dominion.

Kingdom.

King's domain.

The governing influence of the king, God, over his territory, impacting it with his mind, his will, his purpose, his intention.

That's a pretty good definition right there.

That's what it means.

But there's more to it than that.

Producing a citizenry of people who express his culture and reflect his nature.

All right, everybody stand up.

Everybody stand up.

You notice we didn't do our regular antiphonal reading today.

This is our antiphonal reading.

So repeat after me, King Dome.

The king's domain.

The governing influence of the king God over his territory.

Impacting it with his mind.

His will, his purpose, his intention.

Producing a citizenry of people who express his culture and reflect his nature.

All right, let's be seated.

So you can see in that definition three parts.

Number one, the governing influence of the king, Jesus, over his territory, over his domain.

Now we grew up in a republic, a democracy, and in our U.S.

Constitution, it begins with, we the people.

But in God's kingdom constitution, it starts off with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Church.

The heavens and the earth are his.

The heavens and the earth.

That's his territory.

So right below us, my wife and her team are doing a series on the majesty of God.

Instead of March Madness, which I just need to stop for a moment and say, Duke won the ACC title last night for the 21st time.

I just want you to know that.

Coach K is a king at Duke, and he exercised his authority and influence over the New York Life Center and won the ACC title.

So anyway, that's what we now move into, and it's called March Madness.

So Liz caught that because she hears me talking about March Madness every March because my dad went to Duke and he graduated from Duke, and my mom went to Duke.

And so Duke's been in our family since almost Dukeism started.

So now my dad's not a Duke.

But in a kingdom, the king is a Lord.

King is Lord.

Capital L.

He's Lord.

You're going to hear me say in the weeks ahead that the key to kingdom joy, righteousness, peace, and power is whose Lord over your life.

Hello?

Who's Lord over your life?

If it's you, you're going to have a lot of problems, man.

You're going to really struggle.

Because you are you, and I mean, let's face it, you wouldn't follow you if you had the choice, would you?

I know it wouldn't follow me.

Or Jesus is Lord.

Or the Messiah King, the servant king is Lord.

So, so He's He his territory is heaven and earth.

So down below, what those kids are being trained and equipped in is the majesty of God, the creation, the beauty of the stars and the cosmos and the solar system and all of the universe, he is king over.

That's his territory.

And so when the school system and when biology and chemistry and cosmology kicked God out, everything got really confusing for them.

It was really simple before that.

So, first of all, the governing influence of the king, Jesus, over his territory.

The second part of this definition is impacting it with his mind, his will, his purpose, and his intention.

So the greatest kingdom prayer that you can ever pray is our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy capital T, or your, some of your translations now, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass or sinned against us.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.

Greatest prayer, because we're praying, God, bring heaven down to earth in all that I do.

It's not my kingdom come.

It's not my will be done.

It's your kingdom come.

And so, church, that's the beginning of lordship.

The beginning of lordship is we change the prayer from my kingdom come to thy kingdom come.

My will be done to your will be done.

That simple prayer can radically transform our lives into a kingdom revolution.

That's a kingdom revolution.

And it's beginning to pray, God, I want your influence, I want your will, I want your purposes in my job and in my family and in my marriage and in my singleness.

Because when you line yourself up with the kingdom, the kingdom lines itself up with you.

Do you realize you never break the laws of the kingdom?

The kingdom laws break you.

You have sex with every other guy or gal that you uh hook up with, you will get STD.

Your body wasn't made for that.

You steal money, you will get caught.

You embezzle, you will get caught.

Almost everybody gets caught.

Because you don't break kingdom laws, the kingdom laws break you.

That's exciting and that's scary.

Because I believe that there's this there's this aspect of walking in the kingdom that's the passion and the love of God, but it's also the fear of God.

Third part of this definition is it produces a citizenry, not members.

You don't become a member of the kingdom.

You can become the member of the rotary club.

You can become a member of the road, you can become a member of an athletic team, but you become a citizen of the kingdom.

Producing a citizenship of people who express his culture and reflect his nature.

That's pretty exciting.

That's what God's called the road at Chapel Hills to do.

That's what God has called our youth group to produce.

That is what we're equipping kids down below to do and to be.

Kingdom citizens that reflect his culture and his nature.

Who else is going to do it if it's not the church?

That's why it's frightening to see different denominations, even those who in many cases call themselves evangelicals, beginning to downgrade this book.

Because this is our constitution.

The constitution of the kingdom is right here.

And the closer, men and women, you line up your intimacy life, your job, your work, your integrity, your finances, your marriage, your singleness, to this, the more of the righteousness, peace, and joy will be exhibited in your life.

Isn't that exciting?

That's really, really exciting.

At least I'm excited about it.

Are you guys excited about this?

You look a little bit dull today.

Come on.

Everybody say a big amen.

All right.

I feel better now.

Okay.

Okay, what's the number one obstacle to the kingdom of God?

What is in the book of Matthew and in all four Gospels, the number one obstacle to the kingdom of God is religion.

Jesus never has a problem with a sinner.

He always has a problem with religious people.

Jesus could go to Matthew's house, the writer of Matthew, go to his house with all tax collectors there.

And it seems like he does just fine.

But when the Pharisees enter, or the Sadducees enter, or the scribes enter, Jesus, I think, kind of stands a little more erect and he's ready for the battle.

Because religion is a code of ethics that directly opposes the kingdom of God.

So in Matthew 23, look at Matthew 23.

Just turn your Bible to Matthew 23, case in point.

Case in point of the number one, and I would say the greatest substitute for the kingdom of God is religion.

Matthew 23, verse 13.

Matthew 23:13

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.

For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

Jesus, listen guys, Jesus never started a religion.

Jesus never started a religion.

Isn't it interesting that he talks about son of David and son of Abraham?

Chapter 1, verse 1, Matthew, he says, son of David, son of Abraham.

Abraham is considered the originator, the leader of the three major religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

And he never created a religion.

All Abraham did was build a people, a covenant people.

He never started a religion.

Jesus is not a religious man.

He hates religion.

Matter of fact, when he's put on trial by religious and political actors of the time, he admits to them, I am a king.

That's the only thing he admits to, I am a king.

And he won't answer any more of their questions because he's not a religious man and he didn't start a religion.

You're citizens of the kingdom of God expressed through the culture and nature of the king.

That's exciting stuff, folks.

Glory.

Write down glory.

You're taking notes, write down glory.

Right next to it, write kavod.

Kavod.

Some say kavad.

K-A-V-O-D in Hebrew.

It means weight.

It means deference.

It means heaviness.

Kavod or kavod means glory.

It means glory.

It has the idea of honor and majesty.

By distinction and by association, it means nature of, glory of, the nature of.

We as a citizenship of the kingdom of God, not a religious people, we are reflections of the cavod, the glory of God.

And ten times in Scripture it says, may the glory of God what?

Fill the earth.

Church, we are commissioned by God, and we'll explain this in the weeks ahead, to be his agents of the weight, the imprint of the character and the nature of the king wherever we go.

So wherever we go, we bring away the heaviness of the glory and the nature and the character of the king.

Isn't that exciting?

Nobody else can do it but citizens of the kingdom.

There's a lot of good people out there.

Man, there's a lot of good coaches, and there's a lot of good politicians, and there's a lot of good businessmen, just good people.

And I grew up in a family where with my ranching grandfather, and we start talking about someone that maybe I'd met at school or something, he said, he's a good man.

And whenever my granddaddy said he's a good man, that was the stamp of approval of Joe Taylor, which carried a lot of what?

Weight with me.

You see, we still use the word, the glory.

It's the weight.

That's a weighty opinion.

That's a weighty opinion.

There's good people out there, but only citizens of the kingdom of God bring the weight of the king and the culture of the king and the nature of the king into what we do.

So that's what it means to be a citizen of the king.

And so Jesus is forming a covenant people.

A people who carry the imprint of the weight of the king.

Romans 14, 17.

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's the culture of the kingdom.

Righteousness, peace, and joy.

Culture of the kingdom.

The imprint of the glory, the doxa, the kabbod of the kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy.

So men and women, the kingdom of God is the most radical proposal ever given to man.

All that is good that you see in society is a reflection of the kingdom of God.

All that is evil is a reflection of the kingdom of Satan.

And we know, and we'll cover this in the days ahead, that when Jesus meets Satan in the desert, Satan references the fact that he's the prince of this earth.

And Jesus never contradicts him.

Because it's true.

So when we bring the kingdom of light, we're confronting the kingdom of darkness.

E.

Stanley Jones, in his masterful book, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person, writes, man needs nothing so much as he needs something to bring life together into total meaning and total goal.

Life for the modern man in East and West needs something to give total meaning to an otherwise fragmented life.

He needs an absolute from which he can work down to the relativisms of our day.

As master light of all his seeing, the kingdom of God is man's total answer to man's total need.

So I'm excited, men and women, because we're gonna begin to tear apart, pull apart, develop, research together this idea of the kingdom in our lives.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

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