We sort of have a false dichotomy in the evangelical world. You know, we decry, we speak out against people that just do the social gospel because it has been abused. There are churches who do not preach the gospel, but let's just be kind to everybody and help people and have this campaign that's the social gospel. And so the false dichotomy is, well, you either preach the true gospel or you just practice the social gospel. I have an idea.
Let's do both. The gospel has power. And today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip concludes his teaching, Thy Kingdom Come, and shows you what the fruit of the true gospel is. We're glad you've joined us today. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to bring more people into God's family and connect listeners like you to his unchanging truth.
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That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Thank you. Okay, now let's turn to Matthew six and join Skip for the conclusion of his teaching. Now many people and I would venture to say most of us in this room included have made Jesus Christ the king of their lives. You've asked him to come in. You've surrendered your authority to him. You want his rule in your life. But there has never been a universal reign of the kingdom of God on the earth yet. We are still waiting for that.
I want to drill down on this. When that kingdom comes, we won't do it. He will do it.
It's something that he himself will do alone. The kingdom comes when the king comes. Without a king, you have no kingdom. And so we can talk about the kingdom of God internally and spiritually and individually, but the real show starts when Jesus the king shows up. Without the king, there's really no kingdom. Now why do I press this? Because I don't want you to get the idea by the title that we've used, Kingdom City, that we are somehow bringing in God's kingdom. We are not.
He'll do that alone. Do you remember in our previous series on The End is Near? It was a pretty lengthy series. So back in February, I gave a message. I can't expect you to remember that far back, but I bet you're going to remember the content at least. So there was a message in February in that series where I told you the difference between premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. Raise your hand if you remember that. We did that sermon at least.
Okay, so good. So I mentioned that premillennialism, that's what I am. I'm a premillennialist.
I believe the world's going to get worse and worse and worse until Jesus comes back. Then there's the amillennialist, doesn't believe in a millennium at all. It's all spiritualized. It's all allegorical, whatever.
It's just whatever, push it away. But then there is the postmillennialist, and the postmillennialist believes this. Listen, we are going to bring in the kingdom, and we're going to deliver that kingdom to Jesus, and that he won't come back till after we do that.
You say, well, how do we do that? Well, we're going to evangelize the world and Christianize the world, and things are going to get better and better and better, and more people are going to get saved, and the whole world's going to be Christianized. We're going to bring in the kingdom, and we're going to deliver that to Jesus Christ. All I can say about that theology is that is wildly optimistic. In fact, out of touch optimistic, because I've never seen where the world gets better and better and better. Usually, that theology flourishes in the West, in America, during times of peace. When there's no war, when things are going good, the economy is going good, we think, hey, I think we're pulling this off. But the idea is the church will bring in the kingdom.
Now, this shows up in different shades. It is sometimes called Reconstruction theology, sometimes called Kingdom theology, sometimes it's known as Liberation theology. It shows up in the Signs and Wonders movement, it shows up in the Spiritual Warfare movement, you know, where we bind the demons, we take authority, we take them captive, and we bring in the kingdom. That is not what we mean by Kingdom City. God does not need our help to bring His kingdom. He's going to do it all by Himself, quite apart from His church, because He is sovereign. He is the King of kings, He is the Lord of lords, and in His own time, He will bring in His own kingdom. As Psalm 115 declares, our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases. It's one of my favorite verses. God's in heaven, He does whatever He wants. It's like the little boy who said that God is greater than Superman, Batman, and the Power Rangers put together.
That's an understatement. Of course He is. He's King of kings. He's Lord of lords. So that's the character of the kingdom, that's the coming of the kingdom. The third thing I want to talk about is the commission of the kingdom, because we have a second request in verse 10.
Not only your kingdom come, but your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, the very fact that Jesus told us to pray this indicates that God's will is not always being done on the earth. Would you agree with that? Would you agree that God's will is not always being done on the earth?
I would. Well, I just said it. Of course I'm going to agree with myself, right? So, let me explain. The Bible says God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Right? That's His will. Question, is everybody saved? Has everybody come to repentance? Are there people who perish? Yes. Are there people who die and go to hell?
Yes. That's not what God wants. He is not willing. He does not will that, and yet that happens all the time. So, we are taught to pray your will be done, because God's will is not always perfectly being done on the earth. So, God is sovereign, yes. He rules over all, yes. He will bring His kingdom, yes. But that doesn't mean we just sit on our hands. It does not mean that we are fatalistic and say, well, what will be will be. God is sovereign, and He's going to bring His kingdom, so I'm going to just sit back and let that happen.
No. This prayer implies a responsibility, a commission. And what is that commission?
What is that responsibility? To represent the kingdom of God. Okay. Let's look at the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus lived on this earth how long? Thirty-three years.
You guys know your stuff. Okay, let me ask you a second question. Do you know how long His ministry was? Three years. Three, three and a half years was the extent of His ministry. During that time, here's Jesus living in a fallen, broken world. The question, what did He do? What did He do during that time? Some of you might say, well, He preached the gospel.
Good. You got part of the answer correct, but that's not all that He did. We happen to have two verses in the Gospel of Matthew that are summary verses of His entire ministry. The first is Matthew 5, 23. The second is Matthew 9, 35.
They're almost identical with a little bit of nuanced change. Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. There's three activities Jesus did. He engaged in evangelism, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He engaged in discipleship, teaching in their synagogues. And number three, He alleviated human suffering to validate the message He was preaching. He was healing all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease among the people. So He preached the gospel, He trained disciples, and He got His hands dirty to make things better. Now, Christians throughout history have noticed this.
They've noticed what I just said. And in noticing that this sums up Jesus' life, they believed they had a mandate to do something about the culture in which they lived, that Christians are not called to apathy but to activity, that Christians are not called to indifference but involvement. And you may or may not know that the great revivals of the past produced a number of things in terms of fruit. You could study the great revivals of history and you'll find that there was strong gospel preaching, there was mass conversion, there was a renewed love for the Scriptures, the Bible, there was prolific songwriting that would express what God was doing, and the society in which those people were saved in got better.
It got better. Did you know that most social reforms in the West are related directly to the preaching of the gospel? So many examples of this. As Christianity began to spread West, in the fourth century AD, the very first hospital we have in history came about by Christians. And the reason they developed the hospital idea or hospital system is because they believe Jesus gave us a mandate to care for the sick.
Why? Because Jesus preached the gospel, trained disciples, and healed people. So they thought, we follow Christ, we have a mandate to care for the sick. Then there was John Wesley in England in the 1700s. He was a gospel preacher. I mean, he got on a horse and would ride from village to village and just in the open air proclaimed the gospel and brought great revival to that country. But he not only preached the gospel of salvation, but he preached against slavery. He preached for prison reform and for education.
He got involved politically, etc. He inspired by his preaching a young man by the name of William Wilberforce, who was indeed a politician in the Parliament of England. And Wilberforce led an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade, which he was successful at doing eventually in 1834.
Three days before his death, John Wesley wrote a little letter to William Wilberforce assuring him that God raised him up for this season, for such a time as this, and urged him not to be weary in well-doing. Now, that whole mentality spilled over across the Atlantic Ocean into the United States of America so that the Christians began preaching, especially the Quakers. They preached that slavery is the greatest sin against God. And by that preaching in the pulpit and teaching the Scriptures, they developed a movement known as the American Anti-Slavery Society, direct result of those churches. That culminated in Abraham Lincoln crafting and signing the Emancipation Proclamation. A little later in the 1800s, a guy by the name of Charles Finney, I don't know if you've ever read anything by him or about him, but I suggest you do.
It's incredible reading. I have been inspired by him for years. Charles Finney was sort of an interesting cat. He was a lawyer, turned evangelist.
So he was a very critical thinker. He became an evangelist. He shared the gospel everywhere he went. It is estimated that between 100,000 to 500,000 people got saved under his ministry alone.
It spread throughout the entire eastern seaboard. But Charles Finney also said the church's neglect of social reform grieved the Holy Spirit and hindered revival. So one of Finney's converts was a guy by the name of Theodore Weld.
He became Finney's assistant for a period of years, eventually left serving Finney, and devoted the rest of his life to the struggle to end slavery in America. Here's what I want you to see. Whether it's Wesley or Finney, they're both preachers of the gospel. People are in mass coming to Christ. But the gospel they preach inspired others to get involved.
Why? Because the gospel transforms people. And then those people are sent out to transform the lives of other people with that gospel and by their works that validate the gospel that they preach. So a saved soul sanctifies society.
How's that for a tongue twister? A saved soul sanctifies society. Hey, can you imagine if every single human being on earth were saved?
Hard to imagine. But imagine just for a moment every person in the world saved. That'll happen one day. It's called the millennium, so it's not going to happen anytime soon unless Jesus comes back. But imagine if everybody were saved.
Would we have a different world? So let's work at getting more saved. Let's work at getting more saved and showing them why they should get saved because they see the transformation in the lives that God's people make. That's a kingdom city. We are salt and light.
We are a city set upon a hill that cannot be hit. Now I mentioned Finney and I mentioned Wesley. Let me add a few names to that. There was a German Lutheran minister named Theodore Fleidner who built homes for ex-prisoners, like halfway houses when they got out of jail to get them back on their feet. He decided he should build hospitals, asylums for the mentally ill. And one of his most famous students was a gal by the name of Florence Nightingale who became the mother of modern nursing. Then in the 1800s, because of the unhealthy conditions in London due to the industrial revolution, the YMCA developed, Young Men's Christian Association, and the YWCA, Young Women's Christian Association, to bring people in who had been oppressed and abused and win them to Christ and love them for Christ's sake. Then there were missionaries, William Carey who went to India, David Livingstone who went to Africa, to share the gospel and help to heal the nation's wounds that they were living in.
Why did they do that? Why should we do that? Because social concern is the twin sister of evangelism. Social concern is the twin sister of evangelism.
We sort of have a false dichotomy in the evangelical world. We decry, we speak out against people that just do the social gospel because it has been abused. There are churches who do not preach the gospel, but let's just be kind to everybody and help people and have this campaign that's the social gospel. And so the false dichotomy is, well, you either preach the true gospel or you just practice the social gospel. I have an idea.
Let's do both. Let's actually preach the gospel and because it's the true gospel, get involved socially to better people. Faith without works is dead, the Bible says. The fruit of the gospel is change. Now, in Psalm 146, it's a beautiful psalm.
I was finding it this week and reading through it. And so it's basically a psalm where the psalmist encourages people to put their trust in God, but then he describes the God that they're to put their trust in. And it says this, in Psalm 146 verse 7, God executes justice for the oppressed. He gives food to the hungry. He gives food to the hungry. He gives freedom to the prisoners. He opens the eyes of the blind. He raises those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous.
He watches over the strangers. Then it goes on to say in verse 10, the Lord shall reign forever your God, O Zion, to all generations. So there's a kingdom coming. Until then, God is all about helping the oppressed, the hungry, the bowed down, the prisoners, the strangers. So that's what we are to do in the meantime as we're waiting for that coming kingdom. See, if I've tasted the kingdom personally and the kingdom is coming literally eventually, what am I to do in the world practically?
This. John Stott, it's a book I was reading this week. John Stott asked the question, which Jesus do we believe in and which Jesus do we preach? That's a question I want to just close with. Which Jesus do we believe in and which Jesus do we preach?
You say, why should anybody ask that question? Because Paul the apostle said there are people in the church of Galatia who are preaching a different Jesus. So which Jesus do we believe in and which Jesus do we preach? Do we believe and proclaim the Jesus who only preached the gospel of the kingdom? Do we believe in and proclaim the Jesus who only taught people the truth?
Or do we believe in the Jesus who preached the gospel, taught people the truth, and brought kingdom values to the culture in which he lived? And that's why we say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You see, I cannot say our if my religious experience has no place for others.
I cannot say Father if I don't demonstrate that relationship in my life. I cannot say who art in heaven if all my interests are on earthly things. I cannot say your kingdom come if I'm unwilling to give up my sovereignty. And I cannot say your will be done if I'm not willing to let the Lord have his will done in my life.
Your kingdom come, your will be done. We must not become like the country preacher in England. They're called vicars over there. The country vicar was approached by a homeless lady who needed help for her condition. The preacher had all sorts of excuses for her. He said that he was busy, and he was. He said he didn't quite know what to do with her and her condition, and he didn't. And so what he just said to her is, I'll pray for you, and left.
She wrote a letter. I was hungry, and you formed a and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, and you crept quietly off to your chapel and prayed for my release.
I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely, and you left me alone to pray for me.
You seem so holy, so close to God, but I am still very hungry and lonely and cold. So what are we to do? We are to preach, we are to teach, and we are to help heal the wounds of those around us. When we do that, we are validating what we are teaching and what we are preaching.
Now, I would be remiss unless I said something else as we close. The fact that you already do that. I am speaking to a group of people. I'm essentially preaching to the choir, because you are one of the most generous organizations, group of believers I have ever met. When there are needs that we bring up locally, internationally, with Operation Christmas, Operation Christmas Child, with feeding people here and kids in town, you step up to the plate over and over and over again. So I applaud you for that, and we must never get to a place where we don't do that, because we preach a gospel that is transformative. We need to live transformed lives that demonstrate that. That's Skip Heitig, encouraging you with the truth about what the gospel produces. It's a message from the series, Kingdom City.
Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now we want to tell you about a biography unlike any other you've ever read. The best biographies contain the kind of intimate details that make you feel like you're getting personal access to the person you're reading about. From timeless icons to contemporary celebrities, it's exciting to learn about influential people. But one biography stands out above the rest, the biography of God.
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The tricky part is how do you live responsibly in both places so that you don't overemphasize one address over the other? That's always a balancing act for the believer. Some become so involved in this world, in this address, with social causes and activism and all sorts of ways that are good, but they neglect the heavenly part. Others get so theologically heavenly, gazed and preoccupied, they forget about responsibility here. Connect with Skip Heitig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.
