Seeking the Kingdom - 9/06/2026

Well to start out, I need a volunteer.

Now uh uh w Sean, thank you so much for that willingness.

Unfortunately, you do not fit either the criteria of what I'm looking for.

Uh this volunteer needs to be a female and who has her purse with her.

Now, I'm not talking a little clutch or a handbag.

I mean some All right, Audrey come on up.

All right.

Now here, Audrey as you're coming up, make sure it's all zipped up, buttoned up, latched up, locked up.

All right.

I don't I don't Okay.

All right.

That is a purse.

Oh my gosh.

Uh I wish I was your doctor.

I would I would be born for the Yeah, you would uh pay for a lot of vacations for a doctor.

All right.

Now, Audra, don't worry, I'm I'm not gonna look in your purse.

It feels like I'm setting up like a magic trick.

We've never met each other before, have we?

All right.

Now, if all the only permission I have from Audra right now is to hold her purse.

If I were to open it up and look inside, how quickly would you snatch it away?

Uh I think for the purposes of this illustration, very quickly.

Yes, yes, she would.

Because I don't have permission for that.

If I were to turn it over and dump out all of the contents, she would probably be slightly mortified, maybe not Audra, but others might be.

And some of you would run up and help her gather everything up, and and not a few of you would probably get really confrontational with me and say, Have you lost your mind?

Because I'll help you find it.

Right?

Why?

Because this represents Audra's queendom.

This is everything that Audra values and has say so over.

All right.

So from now on, you're never gonna look at a woman's purse the same way again.

Right?

Yes, exactly.

My biceps are burning.

I'm gonna give this back to you.

So let's give Audra a hand.

Yeah, so you know, this idea of a kingdom or a queendom is something we we read so much about in the scriptures, but a lot of times we're not quite sure what it means because we live in America.

We bucked the king.

Say, no, thank you.

You don't get say-so over us.

We are gonna rule ourselves.

Right?

So that when when we read in the scriptures about a kingdom and a king, it can be a bit of a disconnect for us.

Yet it's something that's incredibly important to Jesus.

It's it's the thing that he talks about the most in his ministry.

If you have a Bible with you, turn to Mark chapter one.

So we're starting a new series this morning that we're calling Already and Not Yet.

We're looking at this idea of the kingdom of God.

As I said, it's it's the topic that Jesus talks about and demonstrates the most during his earthly ministry.

Now, a lot of times if if a pastor or a teacher wants to get your attention, he or she is gonna say, This is what Jesus talks about the most.

Okay, I really got to pay attention.

But in this case, it is the thing that Jesus talks about the most.

This is also an important theological and practical area for the vineyard.

So we want to spend some time talking about it.

We're gonna look over these uh five of the next six weeks at different ways that the kingdom shows up.

The kingdom of God shows up in deliverance, in proclamation, in teaching, in healing, and in evangelism.

So if you have your Bible, uh Mark chapter one, I'm gonna read verses nine to fifteen, and then I'll pray.

Mark writes, In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart, and the spirit descending like a dove upon him, and a voice came from the heavens, you are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.

And the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.

Father, we pray, as our Lord Jesus taught us, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We want your name and yours alone to be honored.

Would you open us to the possibility of what happens when the kingdom comes near?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we're going to answer two questions this morning.

What is the kingdom of God and what do we do with it?

So again, the kingdom of God is readily available to everyone who desires it.

So the question, what is the kingdom of God?

Now, a couple of notes as we get into this.

As I said multiple times, this is the number one thing that Jesus taught about and he demonstrated the most in his ministry.

Now, as Jesus comes on the scene and he's talking about this, no, he is entering into a white hot political and theological debate.

The religious leaders of that time and some political groups are wondering when is the kingdom of God going to come and what's it going to look like?

And what Jesus says is incredibly provocative.

He's saying some outlandish things about the nature of the kingdom of God that nobody else would be saying, and it's highly offensive to a lot of people.

Another thing is to know that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven, those two phrases are interchangeable.

They mean the same thing.

Matthew mostly uses the kingdom of heaven because he's writing to a Jewish audience, and he's mindful that they are really aware and careful to not misuse God's name.

And so by way of talking about God, he's saying the kingdom of heaven.

So again, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are basically the same thing.

Further, to talk about how to define it, let's talk about what it's not.

The kingdom of God is not the church.

Right?

You cannot insert church when Jesus uses the phrase kingdom of God and have it mean the same thing.

As an organization, the church can be an instrument of God's kingdom.

Now, even if there were no people, there would still be a kingdom of God, because the angels would be a part of God's kingdom.

So it's not an organization and it's not simply people.

The kingdom of God is not heaven.

And what I'm what I mean when I say heaven is I'm talking about this place, this resting place that we go to after we die, for those of us who are in Christ.

And as we and we will be there until the future resurrection and the new heavens and the new earth.

Jesus is not talking about that.

He's not talking about some future event or place that we go to.

When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he means way more than being saved.

We often reduce Jesus' teachings to how to get saved.

Friends, here's the thing.

If you enter the kingdom of God, you are saved.

You don't have to worry about it.

If your whole desire is to live for the kingdom that God's will is being done in your life and around you, you're in a good place.

Jesus is talking way more than just about being saved.

So I'll come back to a little bit later on what it is that Jesus is talking about.

So let's actually define it.

Talked about what it's not, so what is it?

Here's a short, simple definition from a guy named Alexander Venter in his book Doing Church.

He defines it as the action of God's rule.

The kingdom of God is the action of God's rule.

In other words, it's when what God wants to happen is what happens, the kingdom of God is present.

As I said, we all have a kingdom or a queendom.

We all have people and things that we have say-so over.

Go back to that example with Audrey and her purse.

We all have a kingdom and a queendom.

So we all on one level, we all live this out and experience it, and part of our responsibility is to bring our kingdom into God's kingdom.

When God's will is done, the kingdom of God is evident.

The good news from this passage in Mark chapter one that I just read the good news, the gospel, is that God's active rule is close by and it's available to anyone and everyone who desires it.

As I said, Jesus entered into a white hot political and theological debate.

If you're a power broker at that time and there's this really popular guy coming along saying, hey, it's available to everybody, that's gonna get your your feathers in a ruffle.

You might want to do something about that guy.

I've uh I've I've long thought if Jesus were here today, one of the parables he would tell about the nature of the kingdom of God is he would say it's like rec league soccer.

The kingdom of God is like rec league soccer.

And now some of you, I don't need to say anything further.

Because you've experienced it, you've watched it.

Blessed are the flower pickers.

Blessed are the butterfly chasers, blessed are those who are just glad to be on the team.

Blessed are those who have older siblings and they are living their best life now because they know what to do.

That's the kingdom of God.

Michael Holmes, why don't you come on up here real quick?

Michael has a T a uh more than T-shirt, clothing company, get zipped.

So here he is uh with one of his t-shirts.

He wore it the other week.

I said, you need to wear this this week.

I love if you if you can't read it, Jesus didn't come to bring people to heaven.

Turn around.

Jesus came to bring heaven to earth.

That's exactly right.

That's a good t-shirt.

Buy that from Michael.

I get 30%.

Tell him I sent you.

I get 30%.

So thanks.

That's a great deal.

Oh, I get one.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

This was not even planned.

I'm he's a he's a great, he's a great uh wingman there.

Thank you, Michael.

The kingdom of God is about the future coming into the present.

There is a day when Jesus comes back and makes everything right.

All that there will be is the kingdom of God.

That's what we look forward to.

Uh a friend of ours, Michelle Anderson, who many of you know, one of our worship leaders.

Um, she has one of her sisters lives in um a town called Mansfield, Ohio.

Uh Carrie and I, where we went to college, is right next to this town.

Let me just say it's a very spiritually dark place.

It's really difficult.

Uh, there's a ton of division in this town, and it even uh has impacted the churches.

But something really amazing over the last seven years has been every March they do an event, I think they call it March of Prayer.

And so different churches, every single day, they host a prayer and a worship time, and all these other churches that come to be a part of it.

The amazing thing is that it was started by two best friends.

One's a Pentecostal pastor, and the other's a Lutheran pastor.

That's an amazing setup for a joke.

I don't know the punchline, but I know it would kill.

All right.

So uh Michelle's sister, Jess, works at a church, and they they she's been a part of this, and they came up with something for this year called a festival of hope.

And that what they wanted to do is have all these churches that have been gathering together, praying and worshiping, is to do this outreach event.

It was gonna be explicitly outreach.

They had a ton of just favor and provision as they were planning this uh for a brand new event.

They had 8,000 people sign up for it.

And and they were being explicit, there was gonna be a gospel presentation, there was gonna be baptisms, and uh the day of there was gonna be a massive, this was an outdoor event, there was gonna be a massive thunderstorm that was gonna come during that time.

And you had people that were like, no, we're gonna pray.

And so here uh is an account.

Go ahead and put up the um the picture.

It says some guy posted on Facebook, gonna be honest, we've never seen anything like this.

Had horrific storms heading for us today.

We about went to lightning protocol several times, but the skies literally split right above the speedway today.

The incredible hand cloud followed by a rainbow and sunshine, the rest of the event.

We've never seen anything like it.

I also saw a uh a radar image.

Sorry, I didn't um get this put in here, but you could see Mansfield, and on either side there were storm clouds.

I mean, it was a massive storm on on either side.

Now, as the event went on, again, 8,000 people in attendance, there were 50 people that got baptized, and 257 people made a decision to follow Jesus.

That's what the kingdom looks like.

The unity of believers crossing denominational lines, the theological beliefs, that's the kingdom of God.

This desire to reach people with the good news, to believe that their prayers could make a difference and people giving their lives to Jesus and creation obeying the voice of God to be like, nope, you can't come here.

You gotta go around.

So back to our understanding of the kingdom.

Matthew and Mark start with Jesus announcing the kingdom, like I read from Mark 1.

Repent and believe the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Luke starts off by quoting from Isaiah 61.

This is uh some verses that have come up repeatedly for us this year.

I'm gonna just read them again.

Jesus quotes again, Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And Luke says Jesus finishes his reading, he rolls up the scroll, hands it back, sits down, everybody's looking at him.

He says, Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

So, how do we know the action of God's rule while the the poor receive the good news, captives are released, people are physically healed, the oppressed are set free, and people receive the Lord's favor.

One of the things that that we believe at the vineyard about the kingdom of God is that it's here.

The kingdom of God is here, and it's not yet in its fullness.

It's not yet in its fullness.

That's why we pray for people and sometimes they don't get healed.

That's why there's things that we desire that don't happen quite yet.

Because the kingdom of God is here, but not yet in its fullness.

And there's times that we pray and people get healed.

And the things that we desire happen.

But yet we're called uh to follow Jesus' example of looking where the Father is working and to join him there.

It's about the presence of the kingdom of God.

The kingdom is the action of God's rule.

Another thing that I want to say about a kingdom is that every kingdom or queendom has a dominant ethic.

And the kingdom of God is no different.

The dominant ethic in the kingdom of God is love.

God is love and he cares for us, and he rules over us from this place of love.

Jesus says the greatest commandment in his kingdom is to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Paul writing to the Galatians, this church that's they're they're not sure how much do we of the of the Torah do we follow, and they're wrestling with this, and Paul's like, All right, if if you want to know, if you want to know how much of the Torah to follow, do this.

He says, For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.

Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another.

The whole law can be summed up in a simple in a single commandment, namely, you must love your neighbor as yourself.

So when people are loving God with all that they are, and loving their neighbors as themselves, the kingdom of God is evident.

When people are set free in various ways, physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, the kingdom of God is evident.

One of the nice things about our current living situation is that my parents live between this location and our home.

And uh a couple of things to know about uh about my parents is they are amazing hosts.

They've got the gift of hospitality.

If you spend time at their house and you leave and you didn't have a good time and you were hungry or thirsty, that's your own dang fault.

All right, because they will make sure that you are well fed.

In fact, in fact, my kids, if we make a two-minute stop, all right, and we say, okay, you can go in and say hi to your grandparents, do not get anything to eat.

They go straight to the pantry and they get something out.

I just told you, don't get anything to eat.

But last time we were here, my siblings got two things, and I only got one, so this is a makeup for the last time.

Oh my gosh, Lord, save me.

Or we go over to have dinner, like food is being put on the table.

They make a beeline for the pantry.

All right.

So here's that.

They're great hosts, they've always got plenty of food and drinks.

They were gone a couple years ago, they were gone for an expend extended period of time.

They asked me to do a little project at their house.

I stopped in on my way home from the church one day.

As soon as I walk in the door, I'm like, I'm hungry and I'm thirsty.

Pavlov's dog.

So I went to the pantry and I looked around, I was like, I'll take grab some mixed nuts and went to the fridge, grab, grab some juice.

See, the thing is, with their house, one of the dominant ethics is hospitality.

So even if they're not physically there, that ethics still pervades.

You walk in, you're like, I want to eat and drink.

Now, I would not do that in anybody else's house.

The only time I would I would go in is if you told me, hey, you have to take this home because it's gonna go bad.

That's the only way I would go in and get food or drink out of your pantry or fridge.

So what is the kingdom of God?

It's the action of God's rule.

So we're talking about the kingdom of God is readily available to everyone who desires it.

So what do we do with it?

We seek it.

We seek the kingdom of God.

Jesus, in his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, says, But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.

Here's the thing with that word seek it means a relentless, opportunistic looking, not stopping until it's accomplished or found.

This is not passive.

In this sense, it's not passive.

It's also not something we make happen, but we're called to impropriety and to not stop until we get it.

God, I want the kingdom of God here in my life in this area.

It's a present, active imperative.

To translate that, it's something we always keep doing.

We seek the kingdom of God.

Some of us, and I'm including myself in this, some of us seek, like stereotypically, men and kids look for something in the fridge or around in the house.

We're like, I don't see it.

It must not be here.

And then our wives or our moms come to the rescue and be like, you had to move this one thing, and then there it is.

I'm getting a hearty amen back there.

Or often we're looking for it to be in a different container.

My family of origin is thoroughly Midwestern.

There will be three containers of Cool Whip.

Only one of them is actually Cool Whip.

The other two are some other meal.

One stew, one is now a mystery meal from like three weeks ago.

We're looking for a different container.

So how do we seek?

Well, we have to intend to do it.

We make a decision to seek first the kingdom of God.

Friends, I don't know much about much, but if Jesus talks about this in his highly memorable prayer, and he and he just said what he did about seeking first the kingdom, that we're we're to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done, and to seek it first, I'm gonna start there.

I'm gonna start with seeking first.

Now, Jesus doesn't say seek only, seek first.

It has the place of primacy.

We're called to care about it the most.

I have to confess, as I was looking at this and thinking about and all the occurrences of the word seek, that I really honestly was asking myself, have I ever sought the kingdom of God?

The way Jesus is talking about it.

Every morning, as I shake the cobwebs for s from sleep, I do pray the the Lord's prayer, but so often and so easily I forget about it the rest of my day.

Seeking the kingdom is a decision and a way of life to desire God's kingdom and to go after it until we find it, and then we keep going after it.

I referenced this earlier, but Jesus in John 5 19 said, Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.

So the invitation is for us to keep our eyes open to what the Father is doing and to join him there.

Now, over the rest of the series, we're going to talk about what that looks like.

What is it that the Father might be doing and how do we join him?

So part of that is just paying attention to invitations to when we might be able to pray for somebody, that they share a need, and we use those that Randy referenced, I think, last week, those famous six words, can I pray for you now?

Because maybe the kingdom's cut breaking in in somebody's life or is about to.

Now, as I'm talking through this, excuses might be popping up in some of our hearts and our minds.

You might be thinking, I'm too tired.

Me too.

But maybe that's what the enemy wants.

To think that we're too tired to seek it.

I don't have or you might think, I don't have time.

It's not something extra.

It's just a part of our day as we're going about our day looking for where the kingdom might be breaking in.

Or you might think, I've got too much in my life going on right now that needs my attention first.

But Jesus calls it to seek first the kingdom of God.

And the people that Jesus was telling to seek first the kingdom of God were about a bunch of down and outers with a a lot of excuses.

You know, before this, he told them, don't worry about food and clothing.

Why?

Because they had good reason to worry about food and clothing.

They were poor.

They you know, we take it for granted, many of us, three meals a day plus five snacks, if you're like me.

But they may be wondering, I don't know if I'm gonna get something else to eat today, let alone tomorrow.

The things that we're worrying about don't need to keep us from seeking first the kingdom of God.

This is not a ministry thing.

You don't have to join a ministry.

It starts with just ourselves inviting the kingdom of God to come into every part of who we are.

Or rather, I guess the other way around, because the kingdom of God is bigger than us, to bring ourselves into God's kingdom and say, God, you now have say so over this part of my life.

We bring our homes, both physical and those relationships that exist within our homes into the kingdom of God.

We bring all of our relationships into the kingdom of God.

God, have your way in this relationship.

Your will be done here.

We bring our neighborhood into the kingdom of God.

Lord, would you move among my neighbors for them to meet you?

We bring our work into the kingdom of God.

Friends, our our work is the way that God's called us to partner with Him.

Like it's really valuable.

You've been called to that, and you get to bring that into the kingdom of God.

And then our city.

Would you move in Castleton?

Would your will be done in Castleton the way it is in heaven or wherever Fisher's Carmel, the city of Indianapolis, etc.

It takes intentionality and commitment.

At the beginning, it will feel awkward and cumbersome.

Oh, that's right, I forgot to seek first the kingdom today.

All right, Lord.

Now that I remember your kingdom come.

We'll forget.

We'll start and then eventually, after a while, we start doing it without thinking about it.

I recently uh was listening to a podcast and Ken Fish.

Um he's got a ministry called Orbis Prayer.

He he was really uh closely connected with the vineyard for quite a while.

Um he was talking about praying for a young woman that he had met.

Um I don't know how long ago this was, but um, she was around 25 or 26 when he first met her.

And she had uh there's actually a medical diagnosis.

Apparently, it's really long, and he didn't even try to say it, and I wouldn't even try if I knew it.

But it there's these fit, she had these uh fissures underneath both of her arms and her inner thighs near near her groin.

Now these she didn't just have these fissures, they would ooze pus all day long, and she would have to change her dressings like five times a day from this.

And uh over a period of five years, he prayed for her.

He said almost every month and sometimes multiple times a month, and there was nothing happening.

Now, uh Ken's ministry is very much a healing prayer ministry, and they they lots of different things deliverance, inner healing, physical healing, all that sort of thing.

So they went down every path.

And finally, after like five years, he's uh speaking some event, she's there, they made arrangements with for the two of them, plus two other people to get together and pray.

They're praying, nothing's happening, and he's exasperated and tired and just prays silently.

Lord, I'm tired of praying for this woman and nothing happening.

Like, I need you to do something.

And because of all this time that they spent together, he knew every part of her life.

He said she had hidden nothing.

And so the Lord brought up, you know, kind of asked, like, what is pus and took him down this thing and uh this trail of questions, and then brought up this memory from when she was in high school.

And so he knew right away, I'm gonna pray an inner healing prayer.

And he did, he prays for this young lady.

She's sitting down, she's from a very conservative tradition, but the power of God hits her in such a way that she stands up and exclaims, I've I've just been healed.

Like she knows it.

She takes off the bandages on her arms and lifts up her arms, and the fissures were closed up.

He said it looked like somebody welded them shut.

All you saw were these scars where the where the fissures used to be.

He said, She didn't show them, but later she told him, Hey, the my thighs also healed.

Now, this is a persistence that the Lord loves from us in seeking Him and His kingdom.

Five years of praying for a woman, and then she finally got healed.

But they kept seeking the kingdom of God.

There's never a time to stop seeking the kingdom for any aspect of our lives or any issue that might be going on for us.

There's never a time to give up.

The kingdom of God is already here and it's not yet in its fullness.

We're called to seek the kingdom for healing, for deliverance, for people to come to know Jesus, to understand it better, and to grow in living it out.

So to conclude, the kingdom of God is readily available to everyone who desires it.

Looked at what the kingdom of God is.

It's it's the action of God's rule.

And what are we called to do?

We're called to seek it in every aspect of our life.

We're called to seek the kingdom of God.

So with that, let's stand and and respond.

Amy, if you can come on up.

So every every week when we gather, we want to give an opportunity to respond.

And I believe that the kingdom of God is here.

We're gonna seek it.

And so ministry prayer ministry teams, if you can come forward and prepare up.

So one of the ways that might be an opportunity for us to respond this morning is not necessarily for you to come forward, but to really seriously consider have we been seeking first the kingdom of God?

And to be open to where an area of our life where we might not be seeking the kingdom, and to ask the Lord to help us in that and to intend to do it.

And I think some of us have maybe gotten tired of seeking first the kingdom for certain areas of our life, or just in general, and so now's an opportunity to turn, to turn from our way, and to respond to the nearness of the kingdom to us today.

And I think uh there's a couple of things that the Lord wants to heal.

Um sense I had is uh left some left shoulder pain, and specifically that you may you may or may not know this, but it's like bursa sac inflammation, um, and it's painful when you move, uh move your shoulder, you have limited movement, and I think the Lord wants to heal that this morning.

Also had a sense that somebody uh neck on the right side in that muscle area, kind of a stabbing pain around the middle of your neck up to the base of your skull.

Um I think the Lord wants to bring some healing this morning.

I also had a sense of um somebody kind of recently had some chest pain or discomfort and might be worried that it's a heart condition.

I have a sense it's not physical, it's emotional.

Um, that's just manifesting in this physical discomfort.

So if any of those resonate for you, um, our prayer ministry teams would love to pray for you.

If you have any other needs, physical, emotional, spiritual, our teams would love to pray for you.

Um if things are going amazingly, and you just want to thank God, you want to invite more, our teams would love to pray for you.

Um, or if you just want them to listen to the Lord on your behalf and to share what they have, you can come up for that as well.