The Imminence of the Kingdom

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. The flood gates from the earth burst open and by the time the first drop of rain hit the people's faces it was entirely too late. The flood swept them away. He says that's how the kingdom of God is going to be. It's unexpected. You don't listen. Jesus said you don't get to know the day or the hour.

Not even the angels know the day or the hour. Welcome to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

I'm your host Molly Vitovich. You know it seems like hundreds of Christian books and ministries offer endless speculation about the end times and the kingdom of God. These books, this message, seems to sell really well especially in times like we're facing right now. But today Pastor J.D. explains that the kingdom of God is actually already here but it's also, wait for it, not yet here.

How is that possible? Well, here's Pastor J.D. with answers in today's message titled The Eminence of the Kingdom. Luke chapter 17 verse 20. Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come Jesus answered them do not worry about that because one day I will raise up my servant Tim LaHaye and he will write those left behind books and he will explain everything to you and even if you don't want to read the books I'll raise up my other servant Kirk Cameron who will act them out and move you forward.

And they said the guy from Growing Pains and he said yes. Verse 21. The kingdom of God however is not coming with signs to be observed nor will they say look here it is or there for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Some of the translations of the Bible that some of you may hold right there may say the kingdom of God is within you. Technically the Greek words there could be translated within you that is true but Jesus would never have said that to the Pharisees. His favorite term for them was sons of the devil so for him to turn around and say the kingdom of God is within you is not something he would say to the Pharisees. So another way you could translate those words which is in my opinion the correct translation is the kingdom of God is among you or in the midst of you. Now what's he talking about?

What's he talking about? Well who is in the midst of them? What is in the midst of them?

He is in the midst of them. So when he says the kingdom of God is within you he is saying the kingdom of God is me. He was the essence of the kingdom.

You see they were looking for the kingdom as something kind of out there something coming in the clouds a big political smackdown cosmic smackdown where you know the messiah would ride in on a white horse with a lightsaber slaying all the bad guys and moon turned into blood and Jesus doesn't deny that there are going to be some spectacular elements of the messiah's ultimate coming but he says guys you sort of missed the point. The point is I am the kingdom. I am the essence of the kingdom and to know me is to enter into the kingdom. The most important part of the kingdom of God is knowing Jesus and when you know Jesus the kingdom enters into your life. Now there are certain dimensions of the kingdom which are still awaiting fulfillment in the future but in him in knowing him you get the beginning of it. You see the kingdom works on what theologians call the already not yet principle.

The already not yet principle. That's not just something for seminary students to know that it's very important for you to know because there is a dimension of the kingdom that is already and then there is another dimension that is not yet and people who know Jesus live right in that period of having an already sense with the kingdom and then a not yet sense. Over the last few weeks I've explained to you that the kingdom of God Jesus' favorite analogy for that was a party. A party? A party. When Jesus' kingdom is restored it is going to be the party of all parties. He chose the image of a party because we love parties. I mean we love parties because we're creating the image of God and God loves parties and he's saying in the kingdom of God every one of your your heart's deepest desires they're going to be fulfilled right. So the kingdom of God is like a party not yet are we in that ultimate party. However when you know Jesus that party that festival that feast begins in your life right now. When Jesus what Jesus did through his miracles was he gave us pictures and signs of what his kingdom reign would look like one day but those same miracles also had an implication for us right at the moment.

Give you an example Luke chapter 8 it's just a miracle we skipped over in the Gospel of Luke. Luke chapter 8 talks about Jesus being out on the Sea of Galilee with his disciples he's asleep in the front of the boat and a terrible storm comes up. The storm is so bad that all the disciples think they're going to drown.

Now that's pretty significant when you consider the fact that they're professional fishermen. They've been around storms all their lives so they think they're going to drown. This was a bad storm so they wake Jesus up in the midst of this crisis and they say don't you care that we're going to perish. Jesus stands up and in just the most matter-of-fact way he doesn't say a word the disciples stands up and it says that he rebukes the wind and the waves and it says immediately they ceased not like by the way that the storm slowly died down but this had to be something pretty amazing because the wind ceased and then the waters went completely flat and plastered all in one kind of moment right that's what he does. Now what is the meaning of that what is the meaning of that miracle? Well there's one meaning and that is that one day in Jesus kingdom nature will no longer be a terror to us we won't have to worry about tornadoes and hurricanes and floods and tsunamis and that kind of thing. That's one of the meanings but the other meaning is that for those people who know Jesus right now he calms the storm in our soul that comes from thinking life is out of control and there's a God who doesn't care about us. So there's an already sense of that miracle and there is a not yet sense in in that miracle and that is where believers live. Knowing Jesus is to enter the kingdom of God and you begin the already not yet relationship does that make sense?

Some of you I remember Johnny Eric Santada does that name sound familiar to you? 1976 she was a teenager she broke her neck broke her her spinal cord permanent injury in her spinal cord but through a diving accident. She talks in her autobiography which I would highly encourage you to read she talks in there about how God used that accident to awaken her to God and bring her back to himself. Well in her autobiography she talks about the fact she was raised in a in a pretty traditional church where they did a lot of kneeling in their church and she always just went through the motions in it never really paid any attention she said but after that wreck and after God awakened me to himself she said I went to church and the minister asked everyone to kneel she said for the first time in my life I actually wanted to kneel I wanted to be on my knees in front of Jesus to show him my appreciation she said and then it hit me never in my life would I be able to kneel before Jesus she said and I was overwhelmed with this sense of regret that before when I had knelt I had not meant it and now that I wanted to kneel my knees would no longer do it and then quote she writes I remembered the kingdom resurrection just before the party gets going in heaven the wedding feast of the lamb the first thing I plan to do on my resurrected legs is to drop on grateful glorified knees to kneel quietly before the feet of Jesus and then I'm going to be on my feet dancing can you imagine the hope she writes that this gives someone with a permanent spinal cord injury can you imagine the hope this even gives to one who is manic depressive no other religion promises new bodies a new material universe only in the gospel of Christ do people hurting like me find such enormous hope to live her legs are still crippled they are not yet healed but her soul is already leaping and dancing her soul is in the kingdom in one day her body will catch up do you get this already not yet verse 22 then Jesus says to his disciples the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man and you will not see it and they will say to you look there look here do not go out or follow them for as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other so will the son of man be in his day now Jesus has begun to refer to that coming of his kingdom when he does come with with all the things that people think about when they think about the end of the world the time when he punishes the bad guys and heals the earth right and he seems to understand get this that there's going to be a lot of claims that this is happening over the next 2000 years or however long it is before he actually does this a lot of people claim this religious leaders do this all the time the new messiah is here his name is Muhammad the new messiah is here his name is Joseph Smith his name is David Koresh his words categorically listen don't believe them my second coming will not be a secret movement that you should wonder whether or not you have to join now by the way religious people are not the only ones who get caught up in this kind of hysteria you got secular versions of this every so often a new politician comes along with a new political movement saying this is it this is the answer to all the world's problems this is going to restore peace scientists come along and say this kind of technology is now going to bring peace on earth educators will say it is this educational philosophy it is going to restore peace on earth and Jesus says categorically don't believe them the real coming of the kingdom the real king there's a couple of adjectives actually we'll give you four before the day is over that will describe his coming number one sudden sudden no advance warning it's like lightning he says you don't see lightning coming i remember in in science class that was one of the in high school learning that lightning doesn't even come from the top of the sky to the bottom right it actually starts you remember this from you know either side and meets in the middle and you're like why you know you don't you don't have time to see it it just happens all at once you don't you don't lightning happen so fast it's all of a sudden and it um you can't see it coming number two unmistakable is the second word you would use to describe jesus coming unmistakable like lightning somebody shows up in my house and says i've got a sign of the kingdom of god it's here it's a three-headed donkey that i you know grew in my backyard now in order for me to verify that if they live in carrie i got to drive down to carrie go into their house and look at it right he says that's not where the kingdom of god's going to be it's going to be like lightning if lightning strikes in carrie then i could see it from here he says the kingdom of god is unmistakable big public everybody will see it and know it the point it's not a secret movement you might miss out on now i want you to notice something really quick about this here because if you're paying attention then you might notice that jesus almost seems to contradict himself to the to the pharisees he was like you thought the kingdom of god was going to be big and spectacular but you missed it because it was me right and then now he turns and says when the kingdom of god comes one day it is going to be big and spectacular nobody's going to miss it so why is he saying both things here's the point listen jesus is the only movement you ever need to join that's what he's telling me i'm the only movement you ever need to join i'm the only boundary can i tell you why that is important every cult says you got to join us or you're going to miss out oh oh you know jesus that's great you know jesus yeah well you've also got to be a part of this you get this other leader you got to be a part of this other denomination this secondary movement no jesus is the only movement the only question is whether or not you're inside him or outside him you say well you know well then why do you tell people to join a church the local church is just a community of jesus followers a local church we're not some secondary denomination that's gathered around something new a good church is just a group of people that are gathered around jesus you're not gathered around me we're not gathered around particular denomination we're just a local church that's gathered around jesus that's what a good church is now you say well well why are you making such a big deal out of this because mormons and jehovah's witnesses number one source of converts is still people in churches like this one and this is the line they always use they always say oh great you know jesus well there's another leader that you got to be a part of if you really want to be a part of the kingdom of god and that's just wrong jesus continues verse 25 but first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation now this was the part this was the mystery that everybody tripped over in jesus day because before he could bring the kingdom he had to die in order to bring the peace of god on earth he had to first bring us to peace with god and the way that he would do that would be by suffering and dying he would take upon himself the wrath of god for our sins so that by doing so he could remove the penalty of our sins and then change our hearts create in our hearts a desire to be at peace with god if he had not done that then even if he had put peace on earth we would not have been at peace and we would have turned heaven the kingdom of god into hell nobody got this in jesus day because nobody realized how wicked their hearts were and then why the problems in the world began in our hearts and before god could calm the storms of destruction out there he had to calm the one in here all right verse 26 he begins again to refer to the to the to the to again to his coming kingdom verse 26 just like it was in the days of noah so it will be in the days of the son of man they were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all third adjective that describes the second coming of the kingdom is the word unexpected unexpected god had warned the people of noah's day that he was going to send a flood but he didn't tell them when he just told them it was coming they kind of forgot about it in fact if you go back and read the story of the flood genesis 7 tells you that at one point before the first drop of rain had ever fallen god tells noah it's time i want you to go into the ark you've warned people long enough nobody's listen and god himself shut the door and they were in there genesis 7 10 for seven days seven days with a bunch of animals you can imagine the odors you can imagine the doubts as they're in there for seven days and then it says the rain began it didn't begin gradually you look at the way it's written it says that all of a sudden it came the floodgates from the earth burst open and the skies burst open and by the time the first drop of rain hit the people's faces it was entirely too late the flood swept them away he says that's how the kingdom of god is going to be you don't get any advance warning it's unexpected you don't listen jesus said you don't get to know the day or the hour not even the angels no the day or the hour and no matter how clearly he says this some fool thinks he can figure it out he finds some new way to read the hebrew that if you squint your eyes just right you know and cross your eyes you can see something in the hebrew language that none of us have ever seen when i was in high school right there was a book that came out 88 reasons why jesus is coming back in 1988 does anybody remember that book just out of here raise your hand all of our campuses if you remember that book anybody wow right here okay i see one i guess i see that hand all right 88 reasons why jesus come back in 1988 um i went to a christian school and the christian school that i went to seemed particularly prone to um to things like this and so it actually it actually kind of took root a little bit people reading it and passing around because i'll be honest with you it was kind of convincing the guy really had laid out some impressive reasons why jesus was coming back in 1988 and he had it limited down to three days three days and i remember him saying in the book it said jesus told us we couldn't know the day or the hour so i've got it down to three days we don't know which of those days is right but we know it's one of those three so on the third day when jesus still hadn't come and hadn't come back um our soccer coach i remember sits us all down right before dusk because we were finishing up practice he said well jesus is supposed to come back today you know that's what everybody thinks so we're just gonna sit here and wait for him the last 15 minutes we're just gonna sit here and wait until the sun goes down and then he looks at me and he says jd if that actually happens will you make sure everything gets cleaned up and put back in the in the thing and i said i said yes i will and uh we sat there for 15 minutes in silence and then he said well i'll see you guys tomorrow all right the guy comes out the next year with a book called 89 reasons why jesus is coming out in 1989 he's like i made a miscalculation i forgot i've got to carry the one you know or something like that and and and he blew it he's gonna come out and be like oh i forgot you know logarithm i didn't mix in here and it was something in hebrew i didn't get jesus is telling you no no it's all that's all false that's all wrong he says you can't know the day or the hour it's like the flood he told you it's coming but he didn't tell you exactly when it was going to be the coming of sudden it's unexpected verse 28 likewise just like it was in the days of a lot they were eating and drinking buying and selling planting and building but on the day when lot went out from sodom fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all verse 30 so will it be on the day when the son of man is revealed the same thing here what what strikes you is how normal life seems to be when the judgment comes and sweeps people away it doesn't say by the way that the people of noah's day or sodom's day doesn't say they didn't believe in god just that the imminence of his coming was out of their mind on one level on one level it sounded so strange to them that they scoffed they're like what noah seriously the floodgates of the earth going to boast open and the sky is going to drop while we're all going to drown you're building an ark to float around on for 40 days yeah whatever like a lot like seriously fire and sulfur from the sky yeah we've seen it rain we've never seen it rain fire and sulfur isn't that the same thing today the judgment of god seems so out of the specter of normal reality that people can't comprehend there's a real heaven and a real hell and then when somebody closes their eyes in death they either awaken to eternal bliss in the presence of god or eternal punishment in hell it just seems so far out of the specter of normal life that people scoff at it the other dimension here is that is that they just got busy with what they thought was more impressive more should be more pressing things in life eating and drinking and marriage and anything wrong with those things no they're all good things it's just that they kept people really from paying attention giving any weight to what god had said hey i told you this a few weeks ago but more people listen more people miss the kingdom of god through neglecting it than through rejecting it one of my favorite authors 17th century philosopher named blaze pascal wrote a book called the ponce and in there he talks about about about just really learning to see life in the right perspective he said it doesn't make any sense that people whether or not they believe in god they just never pay any attention to the fact that the one thing we know is true about life is that we're going to die he said imagine you were in a room and in that room every few minutes this monster this savage beast comes in grabs one person seemingly randomly mauls them to death in front of your eyes and then drags their corpse out and then another few minutes he comes in and grabs another one and does the same thing and you're watching this and it is apparent that he is going to systematically do that to everybody in the room and so you just don't pay any attention to it you go on distracting yourself with how much you're enjoying being in the room he's like that monster is your death it's like we know that everybody's going to die why would we not pay attention to the one thing we knew was true of life and he gives another metaphor he said he said it's like you're in a in his day a horse drawn carriage and you're barreling toward the edge of a cliff you know the edge of the cliff is coming but you just don't want to think about it so you distract yourself with the trees and the bushes and the scenery and how pretty it is outside so that you don't have to think about that cliff that is coming that cliff is your death whether or not you believe in god is a secondary kind of question on this one why would you not give this the weightiest importance i asked you this a few weeks ago if what the bible says about heaven is true and what the bible says about hell is true do you understand that these things matter more than everything and yeah things like marriage they even come secondary to this this is the most important question you will ever ever answer verse 31 on that day let the one who is in the house top with his goods in the house not come down to take him back and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back jesus told his disciples to do the opposite of what the people of noah's day and sodom and gomorrah did he said live every every second of your lives focused on the coming kingdom live every second of your lives with the imminence of eternity in my coming pressing in on your heart because it could break through at any moment it might come in your death or it might come through my coming but either one will take you away from this life and into the presence of eternity forever so that's number four word he used to describe the fourth word he used to describe his kingdom imminent imminent you should be ready at any moment to meet god and then he's also saying here your life should be light and mobile and focused on eternity and not super attached to things here and now your life really ought to be light and mobile as the eminence of eternity presses in on it so you're not really super attached to things here now whatever situation you're in it's temporary and thankfully jesus is always close by and our attitude should reflect that nearness you're listening to summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor jd greer jd on behalf of this whole summit team congratulations on your new book when people hear the title what are you going to do with your life some might be wondering will this book help us define if we're actually called to ministry or not yeah you know so i think that's a big question people ask and they ask it at very at different ages you know it's not just like high school and college students that ask that but how do i know if i'm called right and i think there's a myth that christians believe that if god wants to call you into service that he you know there's like this mystical moment where he spells that in your cheerios what he wants you to do yeah if god spells something out your cheerios certainly you should you should pay attention to that but more often than not what god's spirit does is he acquaints you with the the depth of the gospel the lostness of the world and lead you to ask yourself how can i how can i leverage what god has given me my resources my opportunity my talents to to bring people to jesus and if you really think about if the gospel is true and eternity is real then what more important thing can you do with your life than to see people brought to jesus so you know we'd like to actually make this this book available we i wrote it we actually are dedicating all the money that comes in from this book we turn it all back and put it back into the ministry because we just want to see people engage the great commission i really feel like it has a chance to really be a you know kind of a defining moment for for you and to reshape how you approach life so if you go to jdware.com all the information will be there and so hopefully you can do that yes be sure to get in touch today so we can get you a copy of this new book and the companion workbook it comes as our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry summit life wouldn't be possible without the generosity of friends like you and we're so grateful to call you our partners ask for what are you going to do with your life by jd greer when you give a donation today of 25 or more you can also request the book when you join the team of monthly gospel partners it's quick and easy to sign up just call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or you can give and request the book online at jdgreer.com i'm molly vidovich be sure to tune in tomorrow when pastor jd reminds us that more people will miss the kingdom of god because they neglect it rather than reject it that's thursday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries