TEACHING: Jesus’ Teaching
The Gospel of the Kingdom
Time to move into the next element of Jesus's disciple making...Teaching.
Jesus taught his disciples, but what did he teach? Should we be teaching the same thing? Or is there more since the apostle Paul?
Quick answer: yes, and yes.
First, let's kick into what Jesus taught.
Matthew 4:23 tells us that Jesus went around preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. The word gospel means "good news," so something that Jesus was teaching was good to hear. Not all of it, but the gist of it.
The "good news" was that the King had come. Everything that comes under the reign and rule of the King is considered his realm, or kingdom. The kingdom is where his presence, blessings, and privileges are felt by all his subjects. Think of an invading kingdom crossing the borders of another empire and establishing a new reign after conquering the inhabitants. Typically, we think of another kingdom invading our own as a bad thing, but if you are crushed under a tyrannical rule where you languish and suffer slavish oppression, a conquering King means liberation. This is how the New Testament speaks of Jesus' coming; a liberating king who sets us free from our bondage and oppression. It's not only good news, it's the best news in the world. The word gospel means "good news."
The gospels, or the four books that tell about Jesus' coming, relate the good news of his coming and all the benefits that the kingdom brings us. Jesus' message was that the King was here, and things were about to change. Everyone who surrendered to this new king as the rightful ruler of their lives experienced heaven on earth, so to speak, liberation from guilt, shame, futility, and all of the other effects of sin. We don't have to wait for heaven to experience his "kingdom come" as His will is done in our lives.
What We Lost
Before we explore the benefits of the kingdom, it's important to take stock of what was lost when we were. When earth was first created, mankind was at the center of God's kingdom. God Himself planted a garden, a pocket-sized heaven on earth, called Eden, or paradise. God made that garden a paradise, just like Jesus makes the kingdom a heaven. God Himself walked through Eden with Adam and Eve, conversing with them, establishing a relationship built on trust, or faith. God's presence brought them purpose, peace, privilege, and many other things. Yet when God left them alone, their trust evaporated as the morning dew. They trusted what their own eyes could see. They trusted the words they could hear the serpent speaking. And ultimately, they trusted their own judgment above God's word. In their simple act of defiance, sin – or self-rule – entered the world, setting off a chain reaction that broke our relationship with God, broke the world, and broke our ability to experience the following:
PEACE
We lost peace with God. In exchange, we experienced guilt, the never-ending nagging that we weren't okay. With that loss of peace, shame entered in as they realized they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together to cover themselves. Man has been hiding from God ever since, ashamed of who we are, subconsciously aware that we aren't living up to what we were made to be. Embarrassed by their condition, God's approach in the garden caused fear, rather than joy, prompting them to hide. To this day, mankind treats God as an enemy and dreads his approach.
ACCESS
Adam and Eve were no longer able to walk with God in the cool of the day until their sin could be dealt with. They were forced to leave the kingdom of God, and enter the wilderness where they would attempt to rule themselves. God would teach them about sacrifice, killing animals on the spot for them – the first time they witnessed death, one of the horrible consequences of their actions. As they stand before God, covered by the skins of the innocent, the shedding of innocent blood serves a picture of what it will take to bring them back.
LIFE
Adam and Eve lost their eternal life and no longer lived forever. They began to watch each other age, and every time the body replicated a cell, it was a lesser copy of itself until eventually, their bodies died, and they returned to the earth from which they were taken as carbon-based life forms. Yet, every day is an opportunity to return to God; pregnant with opportunity to draw us back to Him, or squandered by resisting Him, driving us further from him, cementing our fate.
PURPOSE
Within the kingdom that God established in Eden, mankind knew their purpose: walk with God, trust him, enjoy the garden, till it, care for creation, reproduce and by doing so, fill the earth with God's glory through reproducing His image bearers. Losing paradise, we lost our purpose. Created to reflect God's glory, just living was an act of worship. Self-worship changed all that. We no longer give Him the praise and worship He is due, and our silence itself is as disorienting to us as it is damning.
FREEDOM
We imagine ourselves free in the way that teenagers long to be free from under the rules of Mom and Dad, but when they end up on their own, they realize how restraining the world out there is. In Eden, the body served the soul. Now, the dead soul that no longer worships goes along for the ride with whatever slavish desires the body dictates. Like an iPhone that is "bricked," we no longer receive a signal from God, and therefore, the only impulses we do receive, we obey.
DESIRE
Unable to enjoy life within the blessing of God, we've lost all sense of balance, and our lesser desires have swollen like a pustule. The right desires placed in us by our creator become constricted until they become strangled altogether. Our problem is not so much that we have wrong desires, as much as we have lost the right ones. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "it's not that our desires are too strong. It is that they are too weak." Our stronger desires to bless, love, and worship become fainter until we can no longer feel them. Despite our "lives lived in quiet desperation" and unfulfilled longings, our souls catch glimpses of the ephemeral "something more" like a brief mirage that shimmers before vanishing once more.
Understanding what we've lost, we can appreciate what the King's reign restores. When his kingdom comes, Christ is restored to his rightful rule, and the blessings of peace, access to God, eternal life, purpose, freedom, and a resurgence of the right desires are restored.
CONCLUSION
How did the King restore all of these lost blessings to those who surrender to Him? Most Kings conquer by dominance, yet Jesus surrendered Himself first. Giving Himself over to His own sinful creation, He laid His life down, and died like the criminals we were. Ironically, He allowed the tables to be turned, yet he suffered something far greater than crucifixion at the hands of men. He suffered the eternal judgment of God on the cross. Hanging there suspended between heaven and earth, Jesus bore our sins, dying a death we deserved, taking crushing weight and consequences of our damnation so we would never have to. He suffered for the sin he never committed: mine. And there, on the cross, Jesus fulfilled the righteousness God required at my hand, as he died a perfect man, and suffered as if he were the sinner, and not me. Because he loved me, and loved you, exhausted His wrath upon Jesus so that there would never be another drop of wrath for me and you...ever.
Our sin being dealt with, Jesus opened up the way back to the Kingdom of God for any and all who would surrender to His kingship. That took care of our punishment, but how could he restore the blessings we'd lost in Eden?
Simple.
He earned it back for us.
Jesus, who lived the righteous life I could never live, made it possible by a perfect sinless life, for me to receive all of God's blessings.
What Has Been Found
Milton titled his magnum opus Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The lost and found paradigm is a fitting one for anyone who has paradise restored in their soul. Jesus actually told a parable about people finding the kingdom of heaven, yet describes very different ways of finding it.
Read the two parables Jesus told back to back and see if you can spot how they are similar yet different:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Matthew 13:44-46
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
In the first parable, a merchant is feverishly scouring the bazaars and marketplaces for the one purchase that will make him rich. He will act as the middle man between the pearl diver and his rich client, making a fortune in the process. The key element of his story was that he was seeking the pearl before he found it.
In the second story Jesus envisions a farmer working somebody's field for them, when they accidentally plow up buried treasure. He is going about his business, not actively searching for hidden riches when he chances upon it. The key element of his story was that he was NOT looking for it when he finds it.
One seeks. One does not. Both find.
The kingdom comes to us in very different ways – sometimes people are looking, sometimes they aren't. But when they find it, they react the same. Both see the immense value of the treasure (kingdom). And yet the epiphany of the treasure's value is the turning point causing them both to go and sell everything they have to obtain that treasure.
The pearl merchant, who was already seeking, seeks more. The farmer, who wasn't seeking, becomes a seeker, yet both must have the treasure at any cost, even if they lose everything else. This is what happens when someone first begins to experience the awakening of their souls to who God is. They suddenly become willing to lose everything: possessions, pride, and their entire life as they know it. They stop arguing about Bigfoot or aliens, and no longer mind being called sinners. They are keenly aware, and in their brokenness, there is a complete and total surrender to God. He is the pearl of great price, and they will follow Him anywhere he leads, even if this means death. For the first time in their lives, they know that they are giving up far less than what they will gain. As Jim Elliot, a missionary who was martyred for sharing the gospel with the Huaorani tribes in South America, once remarked, "That person is no fool who gives up what they cannot keep, to gain what they cannot lose."
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is God Himself. Like Love and Rockets sang, "everybody wants to go to heaven," but not everybody wants to go to God. Heaven might sound wonderful, but heaven is only a heaven because of God. His presence would make the bed of hell an Eden if He dwelt there. Therefore, Jesus said, "this is eternal life, to know you, the only true God." Heaven starts here and now, when someone finds God. Heaven isn't a destination. It's a relationship. Heaven is merely where that relationship blossoms into eternity.
To further illustrate that we don't have to wait to be zapped into heaven to start experiencing eternal life, Jesus' disciples asked Him, "Lord, show us the way to heaven," to which Jesus replied, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Did you catch it? Jesus said, "I'm all of it." It is all wrapped up in Jesus Himself, because having Him, you have it all.
This includes the restoration of the lost Kingdom blessings of Eden:
PEACE - "Therefore, we having been justified by faith, we have peace with God." (Romans 5:1)
ACCESS - "Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." (Romans 5:2)
LIFE - "Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 5:21)
PURPOSE - "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." (Romans 6:4)
FREEDOM - "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin." (Romans 6:6-7)
DESIRE - "Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires." (Romans 8:5)
Blessings of the Gospel
When we talk about the gospel, it's not just one blessing, but many. The gospel is like a multi-faceted diamond. The more you hold it up to the light, the more it glitters, and you notice the light catching it at different angles.
THE GOSPEL THROUGH THE AGES
Throughout history, the gospel has been contextualized to various cultures. Sometimes it's been contextualized well, and sometimes not so well. For example, the good news that God loves us and wanted to bring us back home was the gospel that Billy Graham preached.
GOSPEL OF FORGIVENESS
There is the good news that Jesus took all of our shame, guilt, and sin, and nailed the requirements that we failed to meet to the cross, and liberated us from hell and damnation. Christ's atoning sacrifice justified us before God, and gave us an innocent standing before God. Martin Luther and Charles Spurgeon preached this aspect of the gospel.
THE GOSPEL OF NEW BIRTH
A hundred years before Spurgeon, during the Great Awakening, another way to preach the gospel was in vogue by the Methodist evangelists. That gospel preached the good news that the Spirit of God can come into us and make all things new, animating our souls, and making us born again! George Whitefield preached this gospel.
THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM
There is also the good news that we can live in newness of life, being sanctified, changed, and not being dominated by the desires of the flesh, but being filled with the Spirit and living in victory over sin, the world, and the flesh. This is the gospel that John Wesley preached.
That said, the most powerful gospel is the aspect that you have embraced, and can communicate with others. The reality is that different aspects of the gospel may be hitting you right now at different times. Our gravest danger isn't communicating the wrong emphasis of the gospel, or even forgetting different aspects of it...it's adding to it.
And that's what the apostle Paul jealously guarded when he was called to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom.
The Gospel of the Kingdom According to Paul
Did you know that a misunderstanding of the gospel in a particular area can be fatal? It nearly was for the Galatians. Paul warned them about turning to "another gospel" which at first, seemed harmless. The problem was, they began to trust themselves instead of wholly trusting Christ. They simply added one little requirement to the finished work of Christ: circumcision. False teachers had crept into the church and claimed that if you would be circumcised, then you'd be accepted by God." It seemed such slight tweak. What could be the harm?
Paul was having none of it.
It was true that God had commanded circumcision in the Old Testament. It was important as a symbol for them as God's people, and it signified their faith in him, but it never saved them. In fact, Paul claimed that the law was impossible to keep. If you broke just one rule, it was enough to damn you for eternity.
But Paul had found the good news in what Jesus had done. Jesus had lived the law perfectly FOR US. It was something ONLY he could do. Jesus had not come to abolish the law, but rather fulfill it, and in fulfilling the law and all its requirements, the believer was free to simply...well...believe.
This was powerfully illustrated during one of Jesus' missions, where a heaving crowd of five thousand shouted out, "What works must we do to receive eternal life?" To which Jesus replied, "Believe in Him whom God has sent."
Really? That was it?
They wanted to DO SOMETHING beyond believing. Something that added to what Jesus would do for them. Something they could be proud of...something they could earn.
And that was enough to drag them into hell for all eternity.
The problem with the circumcision group was the same problem that the crowd had. When Jesus spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they got disgusted and walked away. Jesus wasn't enough. To simply believe in the ONE who would do the works that God required on their behalf was NOT ENOUGH for them. It didn't seem to be enough for the Galatians either. And Paul warned them that if they trusted just one work they did to make them righteous, they weren't really trusting Jesus at all!
By the way, the circumcision group didn't die in the 1st Century. People who want to add requirements to your salvation still exist today. They still say things like "If you'd just ____________ (Fill in the blank), then you'd be accepted by God."
Inserting anything into that blank is called "Jesus-AND-Theology" because it's Jesus AND something else.
Anything that you add to the works of Christ for salvation serves as a millstone around your neck that will drag you straight to hell, because ultimately, you are still trusting yourself for your own salvation.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Let's talk about what you have the potential to earn. So far, all you've earned is hell. Sometimes, you earn a slightly lesser punishment by doing some things right. Jesus said that some will be beaten with many stripes and some will be beaten with few. But nobody escapes paying for their own sins, unless they trust what Jesus did for them, to pay for their sins, once and for all.
Now let's talk about what Jesus earned. He ALONE earned acceptance with God by His actions. That's why when Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom, he was chiefly proclaiming HIMSELF, the King. There is no gospel apart from Jesus. No good news. No kingdom. No hope.
This is why the gospel is about the Kingdom...because the Kingdom is about the KING. The gospel isn't faith-centered, grace-centered, or "whatever-centered" phrase someone tells you to parrot. The kingdom is Jesus-centered. Christocentric. The kingdom is all about the King. Just read Revelation, where the inhabitants of heaven constantly fall down in worship and gratitude, taking their victor's crown off their own heads, casting them at his feet, the SOLE victor!
Jesus is the vine, everything else is the branches. He is the fountainhead that all streams of blessing flow from.
You want grace-centered salvation? That's focusing on a stream, rather than the fountain. You can't have it apart from Jesus. Those who seek to be Christ-centered will find themselves being grace-based, gospel-saturated, and cross-centered. Keep your faith, worship and entire life centered on Christ, and you can't go wrong. Give it a chance and your soul will be tempted to put something else on the throne, besides the King. Whenever my Christianity becomes Peyton-centric, or anything-centric other than Christ, we have a problem. I often don't know it...and that's the real problem.
This all matters when it comes to disciple making. In the same way that you'll be keeping yourself out of the middle of your salvation, you'll be doing the same when making disciples. You'll be constantly asking people to look beyond you, to Jesus. Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest of the prophets, and Alistair Begg commented on why: John the Baptist knew how to proclaim the way, point the way, and get out of the way. May that be true of us as we make disciples who follow Jesus, and fix their eyes on him.
Assignment
PART ONE: REFLECT
Meditate on the verses below that demonstrates how God views His people:
Anyone who harms you harms my most precious possession (Zechariah 2:8).
The LORD your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs (Zephaniah 3:17).
The LORD is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. The LORD is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust (Psalm 103: 8-14).
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure (Ephesians 1: 4-5).
This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault (Colossians 1: 21-22).
Now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus (Romans 8: 1).
We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago (Ephesians 2: 10).
Long ago the LORD said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself” (Jeremiah 31: 3).
Verses collected from The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing It, Stopping It, Surviving It by Leslie Vernick (https://a.co/4ZJzOKT)
PART TWO: GROW IN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE GOSPEL
Watch the video below to see Tim Keller's take on what the gospel is and attempt to put the gospel into your own words.
PART THREE: PRACTICE ARTICULATING THE GOSPEL
Over the next week, ask a friend to randomly call you every day and ask you what the gospel is. Each time you explain it, pick a different approach:
Examples:
- The gospel of hope
- The gospel of “God with us”
- The gospel of “God for us”
- The gospel of forgiveness
- The gospel of the new birth
- The gospel of eternal life
- The gospel of righteousness
- (Or any other aspect of the gospel that is meaningful to you)
For a summary of the gospel message, read the following article by Greg Gilbert What Is The Gospel: https://www.crossway.org/blog/2016/10/what-is-the-gospel-2/