Today, we're wrapping up our series if you haven't been with us, The Last Kingdom. And if at the end of today's message you feel like you came in at the end of a movie, you came in at the end of a movie. You're not confused. Having said that, here's my hope, and I've said this every week. My hope is that for the rest of your life and for the rest of our lives, my hope is that we will never be able to unsee what the authors of the New Testament want us to see every time we open the New Testament. And what they want us to see is that Jesus is hocristas, that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the anointed one, that Jesus is king, God's final king. But, and this is what I'm about to say is true for a lot of things.
All of us have experienced this at some level. It is very difficult, sometimes impossible. It is difficult to recognize progress by looking around. To appreciate progress, you have to look back. In fact, sometimes the only way to find the courage to keep moving forward in an arena of life is to look back and realize, oh, I have made some progress. Sometimes it's the only way to keep moving forward. I'll tell you where I first learned this was from a man named Howard Bowen. Very good friend, few years older than me. And when we started the church, Howard just committed to me. He said, "Andy, I'm going to help you and help the team find a place to put this church. We didn't have any property. We didn't have any money. We didn't have any members." And Howard and I met with so many people. We traipsed around on all kinds of properties and people would find out we wanted to put a church there.
It's like, "Ah, we don't know if we want to do that. " This went on and on and on. One time we were traipsing through the woods and we got some sticker bushes. I don't know what you call them, the long sticker bushes with the stickers and you take it and you move past it and then you let it go behind you. And one time he let it go behind him and it caught me right here. And he went on like, "Howard, Howard, anyway." So we'd still laugh about that. And I would get kind of discouraged like, oh, he would say Andy, Andy. Look, every once in a while, because he knew me, every once in a while you got to stop and you got to look back. And that way you recognize the progress you've made. And in your case, our case, we recognize God's faithfulness that we're making progress.
But as long as you're looking forward and there's so much to do and so much to accomplish, and I am terrible at celebrating wins. By the time we get to something, I'm already way ahead in my mind and it's hard for me to stop and just be in the moment sometimes. And how does it say 80? Every once in a while you got to stop. You got to turn around and look back to recognize God's faithful. That's not how you're going to find the courage and what you need to keep moving forward. I'm like, thank you, Howard. Please, please, please keep me reminding me of that. And here's the thing, if you're a Christian, especially if you've been a Christian a long time, you look around your community, you look around, maybe your family, you look around what's happening in our nation, what's happening in our world.
And then you think, really? Jesus is a king. There's like a kingdom like he really came to plant kingdom of God on earth. I don't see it. I don't see it making a difference. I don't think it's made a dent. But when we stop and look back, when we stop and look back and remember where this whole thing started and when this whole thing started and how this whole thing started and who started it, the story of the church, the story of the kingdom of God is remarkable. In fact, it's unexplainable apart from God's intervention on behalf of his kingdom. And the kingdom of God is unstoppable, like things that grow strong. The kingdom of God grows slow. And here's why I say that. Jesus pointed this out over and over and over and over and over. And he pointed it out over and over and over by way of parables.
Parables that make absolutely no sense and parables that seem to have no relevance. If your faith template is all around or built around the question, what happens when we die? And as long as this is the tree that you're trying to hang all of your religious and faith questions and answers to faith questions and all of your traditions on, as long as it's all about heaven when you die, heaven when you die, how do I get to heaven when you die? Listen to this, check it out for yourself. Most of what Jesus said doesn't make any sense and doesn't seem to have any relevance because that wasn't the foundation or the template for faith. He left us and left his people. But the parables of Jesus make perfect sense for a faith system organized around the arrival of a king and the establishment of the kingdom of God.
And when that becomes our framework, which is the framework we are supposed to live our lives through. So much of what Jesus says comes to life and so much of what we thought Jesus means, suddenly we realize what he actually means. And then we realize the kingdom of God is advancing and we are invited to participate in it. And by participating in it, we are participating with our creator, God. But clearly, read it for yourselves. Read the gospels clearly. Jesus did not come primarily to give a safe passage out of this world. He came primarily to transform the world and members of his kingdom are invited to participate in that transformation. So with that in mind, listen to these descriptions of the kingdom of God. These are verses preachers don't usually preach on. And I understand why, because they seem to have no relevance or there's nothing to apply.
What is Jesus talking about? Read the gospels. He comes back to this over and over and over and over. First one, the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Wait, what? The kingdom of heaven is like a seed. Yeah, the kingdom of heaven is like ... Is this supposed to be inspiring? He's like, "I'm not done. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field." Woo, like what? And though Jesus said it is though it is the smallest of all seeds in this culture, it was the smallest seeds you could barely see it. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, it's tiny. It's irrelevant. It's harmless. It's barely noticeable. He says, even though it's the smallest of all seeds yet, when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants.
In fact, ultimately it becomes a tree. What does that have to do with you and me? It depends. It depends. If faith is just about heaven, this has nothing to do with you or me. But if faith is about participating in the ever-expanding unstoppable kingdom of God, it has everything to do with you and everything to do with me. The kingdom of heaven, he says, "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast." Wait, what? Yeah. Well, you're talking about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast. Like what? The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid. And when Jesus said this, everyone in his audience laughed. Okay. They got what we might miss. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast which a woman took and hid in about 60 pounds of flour. And when he said 60 pounds of flour, they all laugh because they're imagining a woman trying to manage 60 pounds of flour.
I mean, this is a gargantuan amount of flour. This is way more than a woman would try to manage. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took. And he uses an interesting word. I changed the word. The English text says mixed, but he doesn't use the normal Greek term for mix. The text, it's a different word. It's in crypto, which means to hide. He says, a woman has all this flour and she hid in the flower. Listen to what she said. She took a small amount. She took a small amount of a living substance, yeast, a unicellular fungus. She didn't know that at the time. And she didn't just mix it. He says it's like she hid it in the dough and it was invisible. It was gone and 60 pounds. And initially, initially there's no perceptible difference, but it went to work and it did its work slowly until he says.
Until it worked all through the dough. And once it had worked all through the dough, it was too late to stop it because it's potency. The result of what happened far exceeded its initial volume. Oh, the kingdom of heaven, he says, "The kingdom of heaven will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them." It's like, all right. And this is a parable that preachers do preach. I've preached this because there seems to be some personal application, but the personal application we make is not the application that Jesus was making to his first century audience. He says it's like a man who went on a journey and he trusted his wealth and he gave one guy five bags of gold and another one a little bit less gold. And he gave another guy, one bag of gold.
And he said, "Go invest this on behalf of me because it's my money I'm entrusting you with. " And he says in the parable that he gave it to them based on their abilities, based on what he knew they could do with it, based on what he knew about them. He said, "This is what the kingdom of heaven's like. " And after a long time, after a long time, the master, he says, of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. And the servants who went to work, the servants who understood their master's intent when he loaned them or gave them a portion of his wealth to invest, the servants who understood the master's intent got busy investing what he had entrusted to them. And when the master returned to settle accounts, they had something to show for it. And they were celebrated, not for their faith, they were celebrated for their diligence in multiplying what the master had left them with.
Now, initially, these parables, the meaning of these parables were completely lost on the disciples as well. You can read it for yourself in the gospels. Jesus tells a parable, drops a mic, walks away, and they're like, "We'll be back. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Nobody knows what you're talking about. " I mean, every once in a while he would interpret one, but most of the time he just drops these things. In fact, in the kingdom of God parables, he would just tell one after another after another after another, just creating this sense of anticipation and nobody knew what he was talking about. And his disciples didn't know what he was talking about. And we read them now and we don't know what he's talking about because our whole Christian framework is about how to make sure we're going to heaven when we die. And the authors of the New Testament are like, "That's not the storyline.
That's not the plot line." The king came into this world to launch his kingdom. And after the resurrection, Jesus first century followers, they understood. It finally clicked for them. The king had come and the king had come to establish the kingdom. The king had come to establish a beachhead, a foothold, basically a base of operation for his kingdom. And with their help and with their investment and with their mixing and with them investing the time they had and the opportunity they had with their help, this small, and we can't even imagine, this small and fragile, it was so fragile. The kingdom of God had a foothold in one of the most tumultuous times in the history of the nation of Israel. They were nobodies. They were just taken advantage of. They had basically no esteem within that region of the world. They were just a means to the ends of more powerful kingdoms.
But with the help of his first century followers, this small fragile operation crushed between temple and empire, hidden and 60 pounds of flower would expand slowly. The book of Acts, Matthew Martin Lou John acts, the book of Acts, you know what the book of Acts is about? It's about the expansion of the kingdom of God after the resurrection. That's what it is. It is the story of the church, but the church, the church and the church people, the eclesia of Jesus, the gathering of simply of Jesus. That's why again, the way we talk about eclesia is important. Church isn't the right word. We've talked about that. It's the gathering. It's the people of the movement of Jesus. The book of Acts is how the kingdom of God began to spread in the Gentile world all the way around the Mediterranean Mediterranean realm. It was a picture of what was ultimately going to happen in the entire world because Jesus wasn't kidding when he said, "Look, this isn't an attempt.
This is a promise. I will build my eclesiah. I will build my gathering, my assembly. I will build my people and the gates of Hades death itself will not overcome it. " In other words, what Jesus said in place 2000 years ago is unstoppable. The kingdom as it turns out, the kingdom of heaven as it turns out, is in fact exactly like a mustard seed that starts out so small, you can barely see it, a gathering of 12 disenfranchised Galileans with some other people scattered in, nobodies. The kingdom of heaven is exactly like yeast, a tiny little thing of life, a portion of life that was hidden in something so large you couldn't even see it. It is in fact like a man going on a journey because Jesus left and he said to his disciples, "Okay, I'm going to invest in you what you need to take this message to the rest of the world." And it grew and it spread and it overwhelmed an empire.
And here's the thing, this is why we have to look back and now look around. See, first century Christians, they couldn't imagine this. They couldn't even imagine the United States. They couldn't imagine. They didn't even know how big. When Jesus said, "You need to go into all the world." They were like, "We've been about 50 miles from ... How big is the world here? Does that exist that hyperbole?" They could not begin to imagine us. They could not begin to imagine this because it is difficult. It is almost impossible to recognize progress by looking around. But we, come on, we have 2000 years of history to look back on. We have 2000 years of progress to look back on from inconsequential, inconsequential Galilee to every nation on earth, the gospel was taken and spread. The mustard seed grew. The yeast expanded. The servants of the king invested.
We have 2,000 years of history to look back on. The first century followers of Jesus had nothing to look back on. Here's what they had. They had someone to look to their resurrected king. The resurrected king who suffered the worst that Rome could throw at him and shook it off. And then in the end, he shook off death itself. We're going to come back to that in a few weeks. And then after the resurrection, he gathers his closest followers to say, to prepare for the public launch of the kingdom of God on earth. And he instructed his crew. He said, "Hey, meet me in Galilee. It's safer in Galilee. It's north of Judea and Jerusalem. Jerusalem's a mess right now because of what's just happened." And he gathers with him in Galilee and he lays out this crazy strategy. There's no way this is going to work.
There's no way this is going to spread. There's no way it's going to make it out of Galilee, much less the kingdom of God that came for the whole world. Here's what the text says. Matthew tells us Matthew was there. Matthew said, "Then Jesus came to them." And he said, and again, you've heard these words so many times. I want you, if you grew up in church, I want you to hear these words for the first time coming from the lips of your king.
And if you've never heard this before, maybe that's good because you're not predisposed to hear it the way maybe you've heard it taught and heard it applied. The words of a king. Listen to this. Jesus came to them and said, "What only a king can say." How did we miss this? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. This is king speak. Here's why I say that. Authority wrapped up in an individual. No committees, no voting, no Congress, no debating. No, let's find out what everybody thinks. See, in a kingdom, the word of the king is law. And Jesus positions himself as a king. And he says, "All authority, not just here, all authority in heaven and on earth, that's all the authority period, has been given by my father to me, to which some of the guys in the group thought, okay, so now we're going to retake Jerusalem." And Jesus is like, "No, it's way bigger than that.
" Gentlemen, we're going to retake the whole world and not by force, not by the failed methods of the kingdoms of men that just will go round and round, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. It's not the history of this very piece of property. He could have said, "It's not the history of Judea and Galilee, proof enough to know that it's back and forth and it's back and forth." No, we're not going to take the world like that. We're going to take it one heart and one mind at a time. Oh, Jesus, that's going to take forever.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who went on a long journey. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who had 60. They're like, "Oh yeah, that's what you've been trying to tell us." We're going to take it one heart and one mind at a time. Here's what I want you to do. Here's the strategy. He said, "I want you to go and I want you to make followers and learners of me. I want you to create more kingdom citizens, multiply followers of the king and not just around here of all people group. Some of our English translations say of all nations." The idea is of all people groups. This is going to be a kingdom without a common culture, a kingdom without borders, a kingdom without a common language, a kingdom that's going to have so much diversity at times.
You're going to wonder if you're all part of the same kingdom, but you're all going to be part of the same kingdom because you're following the same king and you're going to baptize them. And why are you going to baptize them? Because this is how they're going to know they're part of the covenant. They're going to be baptized in my name. And then this.
And when you go, here's what I want you to do. Here's how you're going to make these followers of the king. You're going to teach them to obey, not simply believe so they can go to heaven when they die. In fact, that's not even in this. He says, "I want you to teach them to obey." Now, we got to pause here and talk about this. Traditionally, the church, not just traditionally, generationally, the church has ignored what Jesus says next because here's the thing. When the church lost the kingdom plot line, when the framework was no longer the kingdom of God because the king has come and the framework became something else, and it's been several other things, but for many of us, it's how to go to heaven when you make sure you're going to heaven when you die. When the church lost the kingdom plot line, it was easy to ignore this next line.
And when the church reduced the plot line to what happens when we die, what Jesus said next, it had virtually no relevance and it kind of felt off message. So my hunch is, most Christians don't know what he said next in one of the passages of scripture that is quoted the most because we call this the great commission, right? So don't say it out loud, okay? But just think for a minute, do you know what comes next? Most Christians don't. It's okay. What we would expect is teaching them to obey the Bible, but there was not a Bible that came centuries later. Well, teaching them to obey the law, but the Old Testament law wasn't going to get any traction outside of Judea and Galilee and maybe Samaria. In fact, it took the church 20 years to realize, oh yeah, that's not what he said.
King speak. I'm the king. I want you to go and teach people in every nation and every generation and every culture to obey everything I have commanded you because I am the king. The king's commands. Teach them to love like your king. Teach them, as we talked about last week, to fight like your king. Teach them to one another like your king. Teach them to others first like your king. Remind them that your king did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life. Teach them to live that out. Teach them to be like me. Teach them to be Christlike, which means now that you know, teach them to be like their king. That's what I want you to teach them. That's not been the point of the spear message for the church in my lifetime. That's not been the point of the spear message of the church for generations because somehow we decided that Jesus came to teach us all how to escape to heaven when in fact he came to establish a kingdom on earth to transform the world.
And you have been invited to participate in that transformation.
And then he made a promise. He said, "And I'm about to leave, but I'm actually going to be with you always to the very end of this age." And the question, and I've asked you this before and hopefully you know the answer to the question is who is you when he says, "I'm going to be with you always." Who is you? You are the kingdom people. You are the kingdom expanders. You are those of us who live in this day and age that God has given us a bit of his wealth and invested in us with some gifts and some talents and some time. He says, "Now, I've given you a portion of what belongs to me. I've given you life. Now I want you to invest that in my kingdom. And a long time from now, I'm going to come back and I'm going to see what you did with it.
And by the way, I'm going to be with you the whole time because you're doing my work. You're expanding my kingdom. You understand my agenda. You have put me first." And for 30 years, we're in year 30 as a group of churches. For 30 years, we have been stubbornly. That's the best word I know how to say or can come up with. We have been stubbornly committed to being part of the assembly, the assembly of you. Jesus followers who have not lost the plot line. It's why we're committed to being an outward facing group of churches that don't talk bad about people and don't name names and don't tee off and leverage off the failure and the sin of people because our king never did that. That tried to the best of our ability to create churches that reflect the tone and the posture and the approach of our king.
We don't want to lose the plot line. We want to be Jesus followers who seek first. What the king says matters most. And we don't get it perfect every time, but this is what we have been committed to and this is what we will continue to be committed to. We will continue to be participants in the ever expanding kingdom of God locally, nationally, and ultimately globally. And as it relates to this series, I hope that you spend the rest of your life reading the New Testament and reading the scripture, reading the Old Testament and the New Testament. But I hope that for the rest of your life, when you open the New Testament, you look for not a ticket out of here. You look for a king who has invited you and privileged you with the opportunity of advancing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
I hope for the rest of your life, you see Jesus for who the authors of the New Testament risk their lives to introduce us to.
This is who they were convinced Jesus is, God's final king, who established a kingdom that would last forever, who came to establish the last kingdom. And regardless of what you've done, how many times you've done it, where you've been and where you haven't been, and how many promises to God you have broken based on the life and the teaching of Jesus, you are invited to participate in it. And regardless of what you've done and what you haven't done and what you promised God you would do, regardless of all of that, you are invited to advance his kingdom in the world. Hey, thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please make sure you check out the links on your screen for what to watch next and check out the description below where we are going to provide you with free resources designed to help you make better decisions and live with fewer regrets.
And again, thanks for watching.
