The Kingdom of God, Luke 9:1-6

As we come to this passage today, I feel it necessary to define our terms once again for the sake of clarity in regards to understanding this passage and in fact, to help you to understand the gospel more fully.   I think a lot of us have a short sided view of Christianity, because we don’t see the big picture of the gospel.

To start with, I want to draw your attention to the often heard phrase found in vs. 2, “the kingdom of God.”   The apostles were personally commissioned by Jesus to go out and preach the kingdom of God.  In the process, they were given authority to perform healing and to cast out demons.  But in order to fully understand their commission, I feel it is necessary to review what exactly is referred to as the kingdom of God.  By the way, a study of the four gospels will reveal that the phrase kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven are used interchangeably.  One gospel writer says kingdom of God and another says kingdom of heaven, and yet both refer to the same event.  So there is no difference.

In the Old Testament, the kingdom of God was foretold, starting with Abraham.  He was promised that a great nation of people would come from his seed. This nation began through one promised, chosen seed from whom would come one through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And so Isaac his son was born, and in time Isaac fathered a son called  Jacob, and God changed Jacob’s name to Israel.  Israel became the patriarch of the nation of Israel. Jacob then had 12 sons, which comprised the nation of Israel called the chosen people of God.

Some 400 years later, Moses comes on the scene.  He was the greatest prophet that Israel would ever see before Christ.  He came proclaiming the word of God and God attested to Moses words, which was God’s word, with accompanying signs and wonders.  Moses would eventually write the first 5 books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch, or the Law.  And so God gave Moses great authority and power to perform signs and wonders as attestation that he spoke the words of God.  It was at this time that the first reference to the kingdom of God was spoken. In Exodus 19:6 God says through Moses, “and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”  So we see from one man, 12 tribes, then a nation, and then a holy kingdom.

Fast forward 40 years, and the Israelites come to the Promised Land or Canaan,  which is divided up among the 12 tribes and the people settle into their life which was under the rule of the priests who spoke for God.  The rule of the land in Israel was a theocracy.  But the people rebelled against God’s rule, and asked for a king like the nations around them.  They wanted a human king to go before them like the other nations had.  And though God warned them of the disastrous consequences of that desire, He allowed them to have a king, a man named Saul who looked exactly like the fine figure of a man that they thought a king should look like.

But God was displeased with Saul because he was disobedient, so God took the kingdom away from him and gave it to young man named David.  David had a heart after God.  And God promised David specific promises concerning a successor to his throne that would be established forever and would not fade away.  This was the first real indication that a kingdom was coming which would be eternal, that would be the kingdom of God.  David writes many prophesies concerning that coming kingdom, one of which is in Psalm 45:6,  “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.”  So for the holy kingdom, there is prophesied to be a holy King who is to come.

As you move on to the prophets and the minor prophets, the references to the coming kingdom of God are more frequent and more descriptive.  Isaiah wrote a famous prophecy in chapter 9 vs. 6: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.”

The prophet Daniel also predicted this kingdom in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar.  When interpreting the dream of the statue, he says in  Daniel 2:43 regarding the toes of the statue; “And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery. In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.”

So as the Old Testament scriptures were written, the Jews began to understand the  prophecy that there would be a kingdom of God which was to come.  It would be manifest in the coming of the Messiah who would be King.  And it would be a kingdom that would never fade away or be destroyed, but will in fact destroy all the other kingdoms of the world.

But by the time of the Roman Empire, in the Jewish mind it was difficult to reconcile the prophecy with the reality.  The nation of Israel  was only a remnant of it’s former glory.  Ten of the 12 tribes had been lost and disbursed throughout the world.  There were only two tribes left in Israel, Judah and Benjamin.  The nation had no native king.  The Jews lived under the rule of Rome. Their temple was only a shell of it’s former beauty.  And so the people longed for this long ago prophesied king who would come, the Messiah, as they believed that He would set things straight, and reinstitute the throne of David and overturn all their enemies.

The problem was, when the Messiah came, He was not born in a palace, but in a stable.  He seemed to be an ordinary man, from a nondescript town in Galilee.  He lived a pretty normal life until the age of 30.  His cousin John, began a ministry around the same time that focused on the coming kingdom of God.  John went about preaching that the people needed to repent, for the kingdom of God was at hand.

When Jesus began His ministry, He too went about preaching a message of repentance, but He preached that the kingdom of God had come.  He said repeatedly that the kingdom of God had come near, or the kingdom of God had come upon you.  He was preaching about the characteristics of those in the kingdom and how they could enter it.  He was publicizing that the kingdom of God was here, and they must repent and enter it to be saved from the wrath to come.  

“Moses had said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you.”  And like Moses, as Jesus proclaimed the kingdom He also performed miracles as a testament that He was speaking the words of God.  As I said last week, He did not come to heal every person in Israel, or to raise from the dead every one who died.  But He came to declare that the kingdom of God had come and His works bore witness to that.  His works were a foretaste of the final stage of the  kingdom of God which was still to come.

But the Israelites as a nation for the most part did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, because they did not accept His message of repentance.  Jesus showed no interest in politics or rebellion against the rule of Rome.  He avoided their attempts to make him a physical king.  His kingdom was a spiritual kingdom.  What they did not understand was that the kingdom would come in two stages.  The first stage was a spiritual kingdom, whereby Christ would reconcile the people to God, and He would rule and reign in the world first of all in their hearts and minds. Jeremiah 31:33 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” It was a kingdom of the heart, a spiritual kingdom. And in Matt. 24:14 Jesus said that “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” The second stage would be a physical kingdom when He would set up His rule among His people in a new heaven and a new earth.  The spiritual kingdom was inaugurated with His first  appearing.  His second coming would consummate the final stage of His kingdom, when the spiritual will be reconciled to the physical. Again Jesus spoke of this in Matt. 24, “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.”  “And so we shall always be with the Lord.”

But though the people would follow Him because of the miracles which He did, for the most part they rejected the message of repentance.  His own townspeople tried to throw Him off a cliff.  And the religious leaders hated Him and kept looking for a way to trap Him by what He said.

By the time we get to chapter 9 of Luke, Jesus is 18 months into His ministry.  He knows that He has only another 18 months to conclude His earthly ministry, to establish the kingdom of God.  He has already called the disciples to follow Him.  And then out of the disciples, He named 12 as apostles to be His personal emissaries.

Now the 12 were a unique, non reproducible, called group of men. They were called by Christ in person, and given His authority as His personal representatives. In Acts 2, it says that one of the criterion of the apostles was that they had been witnesses to His resurrection. It is significant that Jesus called 12 men to be apostles, not 18 or 24, but 12.  Symbolically, Christ was saying that this kingdom of God will have a new foundation, 12 new spiritual leaders that will take the place of the apostate twelve tribes of Israel.  They would be the foundation of this new humanity, a chosen race who would be born not of flesh, but of the Spirit. As foreshadowed by Abraham, from one chosen seed would come 12 sons, from which would come a holy nation which would be the kingdom of God.  Ephesians 2:20 says this church, which is the spiritual manifestation of the kingdom of God, would be built on the foundation of the apostles, Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. Jesus said in Luke 22:29 to the apostles, “I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”  So there was 12 authorized apostles, and their position cannot be replicated, just as a house cannot have more than one foundation.

Now up to this point Jesus has spent all this time in Galilee and the people had mostly rejected Him.  Now He is getting ready to go to Jerusalem, having already set His face for the cross.  But He wants to give the cities and towns in Galilee one more chance to hear the gospel concerning the kingdom.  So He commissions the apostles to go through the towns two by two preaching the gospel of the kingdom once more.  Jesus is using a principle of multiplication.  Up to this time, He had been doing all the preaching, He was the only one that healed.  But now He was delegating His authority to these special men, to personally represent Him and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom throughout Galilee.

So it was important that if these 12 men were to be emissaries of the kingdom, preaching the gospel as the words of Christ, then they would need to be given the attesting works that Christ had which showed that they were speaking the word of God.  So Christ gave them authority over demons and over sickness.

Listen, it’s important that we do not make the mistake of thinking that these records of miracles in the gospels are given to us so that we can have a methodology for recreating such miracles ourselves.  Jesus did miracles to attest that He spoke the words of God and to inaugurate the coming of the kingdom.  And He gave the apostles authority to do miracles to attest that they also spoke the words of God as they proclaimed the good news of the kingdom.  How else were you to recognize that the words which they spoke were God’s words unless there was a supernatural attestation accompanying them?  Today, we don’t need miracles to attest to revelation because we believe that all divine revelation is complete in the Bible, the word of God.  The apostle John warned in Revelation that no man should add to the revelation found in this book.  So if a man stands up today and preaches a message, I don’t look for him to perform a miracle to testify to the truth of his message, but rather I compare what he is saying with the word of God.  I have the complete revelation of God, so I don’t need a miracle for proof.  The word of God is sufficient in and of itself. 2Tim. 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  The word of God is adequate for every good work, it is sufficient for every need.  We should not be seeking additional revelation.  God has given us all revelation contained in His word.

These 12 apostles, these men who were the new spiritual patriarchs of the church, the foundation of the church, would take the words of Christ and one day write them down and expound them for us that it might become our New Testament scriptures.  And for a time they would be given divine authority to do signs and wonders in keeping with that authority.  Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:12, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.”  Those were God’s witness that they were true apostles and that you could accept their words as God’s word. Hebrews  2 verses 3 and 4, "How shall we escape if we neglect to great a salvation which at the first was spoken through our Lord, then confirmed by those who heard...that would be the apostles...God bearing witness with them by signs and wonders and various miracles."

Listen, God was doing nothing less than establishing the gospel of the kingdom. He was inaugurating the kingdom of God, and He did so with special sings and wonders attesting that it was His words that they were speaking.  I believe  scripture is clear that the apostolic age was a limited age.  It does not continue today.  This is not a methodology for Christians today to go around trying to heal people or even cast out demons.  God does still heal and deliver people from oppression and captivity, but He has not given us the authority in our persons the way that He did with the apostles. In fact, as I mentioned last week in my sermon, as the scriptures were being completed, the apostolic age was coming to a close and with it, the supernatural gifts of attesting miracles.  Paul says in 2 Timothy, the last book that he wrote before martyrdom, that he left Trophimus sick in Miletus.  Obviously, Paul wasn’t able to heal him.  And He told Timothy his son in the faith, to drink a little wine for his stomach problems.  There had been an earlier time in Paul’s ministry when handkerchiefs were carried from Paul and laid on people so that they would be made well.  But obviously, that wasn’t the case with Timothy, because by then the power to perform miracles was no longer there because it had served it’s purpose. It’s purpose was never to establish a physical kingdom without hurt or pain or disease, but to validate the word of the apostles as being the word of the Lord.

And so we see that power decline and eventually disappear as the gospels and the epistles are being written.  I think that is what is referred to in 1Cor. 13:8, “Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

Now though we cannot reproduce either the office of the apostles nor the signs of an apostle, we can emulate the works of the apostles.  As they received a commission, so we too have received a commission. Their commission was limited; they were only to go to the Jews, not the Samaritans or the Gentiles.  But our great commission says we are to go into the whole world and preach the gospel and make disciples, starting with Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

And in the text we can find several other components of their ministry that are applicable to us as well.  The primary one that is in both the great commission and the apostle’s commission is that an emissary of the kingdom of God proclaims salvation. In verses 1 and 2, "He called the twelve together, gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases and sent them...here's the purpose...sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and perform healing." First and foremost, He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God.  In Eph 4:11, Paul describes the offices of the leadership of the church, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers…” but notice the next verse; for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”  So there may be distinctions in the offices which are given by God, such as the office of the apostles,  we are all called to go, to be sent, which is what apostle means, sent ones, we are all called to the work of service to build up the kingdom of God, to proclaim the good news of the kingdom to our family, our communities and to everyone we can reach.  It’s not the job of the pastor alone.  But it’s the commission of all the saints.

Secondly, an emissary of the kingdom should show compassion on the lost.  In addition to the miracles being the witness of God to the apostle’s teaching, the healing and delivering of demons that the apostles did was a mark of compassion.  The kingdom of God has come to earth because of the compassion of God for lost sinners.  The world was without hope, living lives enslaved to the kingdom of darkness.  And Christ came to deliver us from that darkness. Colossians 1:13 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”  Sickness and death and demon possession are symptoms of the condition of the human race under the curse of sin.  And so Jesus showed in those signs and miracles that He did the compassion of God for man.  Jesus could have jumped off the pinnacle of the temple as the devil tempted Him to do to show that He was God.  He could have written His name in the sky for everyone to see.  He could have flown around in the air to prove that He was God.  But He chose miracles of compassion, healing the sick, delivering those that were oppressed.  And that is the work of the citizens of the kingdom as well.  Compassion is going to seek and to save those that are lost.  We need to reach out to those that are hurting and invite them in.  Church should not be just a place for well people, but for those who are sick.

Thirdly, the emissary of the kingdom is someone that marked by faith.   Jesus told the apostles in vs. 3, “Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not even have two tunics apiece.”  Faith is trusting that God will provide all that you need to do all that He tasks you to do.  This statement adds further evidence that the apostles ministry was a unique ministry. It’s noteworthy that those modern day “apostles” that masquerade in pulpits today claiming to be healing under the authority of these verses do not want to claim verse 3 along with that authority.  But they tend to want to get rich from it.  They fly from city to city in private jets and wear $3000 suits.  They are obviously not apostles by their own definition.  But Jesus wanted to show the true apostles that they could trust Him to provide for them every step of the way.  They were going with just the shirt on their back.

And  their faithfulness should be an example to us.  Our focus as emissaries of the kingdom should be on serving the Lord.  God will provide for our needs as He did for theirs.  But our problem comes when our wants replace our needs and keep us from the work of the kingdom.  We are tasked with the work of the kingdom just as John the Baptist, Jesus and the Apostles had been.  Our office may be different, but our ministry is essentially the same.  We need to know that Christ is depending upon our faithfulness.   Our faithfulness is necessary to build up Christ’s kingdom, and when that work is done, then the kingdom will be consummated as Christ returns for His people.  Let’s not lose sight of our eternal  purpose because of our focus on temporal things like clothes, and food and money.

Fourthly, an emissary of the kingdom is characterized by contentment.  Jesus told the apostles in vs. 4; “Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city.”  Listen, there is a great need for contentment in ministry.  I see so many people start something and then move on to another, greener pasture down the road.  We need to stay in the place where God has put us until we know for sure that God has closed the door.  It takes a long time to grow a vineyard, and an even longer time to produce fruit.  We need to be faithful to the place God has opened up a door for us and stop running from church to church, from house to house, from town to town, from ministry to ministry.  Be content, find your place, do the work that God has called you to do today, right now.  And when you have been found faithful in that , then God will open a greater door of service to you.

Fifthly, understand that as an emissary of the kingdom you will receive rejection.  Jesus said in vs. 5,“And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”  I can guarantee you one thing, if you’re speaking the truth of God’s gospel, then not everyone is going to like it.  If they didn’t accept Jesus then you can bet that not everyone is going to like you if you’re proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God.  Because there is only one way into the kingdom, and that starts with confessing your sins and being willing to turn away from your sins.  Lots of people are attracted to religion for a variety of reasons, most of the self serving.  But not a  lot are humble enough to confess that they are a sinner in need of saving, that they are spiritually bankrupt.  Sometimes I feel like the greatest proof that I am teaching the truth is the amount of opposition I get to preaching the gospel.  But the fact is that people don’t want to renounce sin.  They like the idea of coming as you are, but not the principle of being transformed into the image of Christ.

Jesus is saying that there is a point when a person hears the truth over and over again, and always finds something wrong, or finds an excuse to live the way they want without acknowledging God’s rule over their life, then there comes a point that when they continue to reject the truth, you need to move on to a more receptive audience.  The Bible says, don’t throw pearls before swine.  Swine don’t appreciate pearls, do they?  And it says, don’t give what is holy to the dogs.  That was a reference to taking meat that was to be sacrificed to God and instead throw it out for the dogs to eat.  And the implication is that if they continue to reject sound doctrine and godly counsel, they have rejected the gospel of the kingdom, and we need to move on.  Stop wasting time with people that won’t respond. There will be some that will respond.

In closing, I trust that first of all you are a citizen of the kingdom of God.  And that as a citizen you will be found to be a good steward of the grace that was given to you.  I hope that you have found your position in the work of the kingdom and are dutifully fulfilling your purpose before God, that you are content, you are compassionate, you are faithful, you are proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.  One day soon, Jesus is coming back again, and this time He is coming in power and glory, and every eye will see Him as the glorious King as His train fills the skies, and He will consummate the Kingdom of God on earth.  Every knee will bow on that day, and every tongue will confess Him as Lord.  Let us be found faithful when He comes.