Take your Bibles this morning and turn to Luke chapter 17 I'm going to read just two verses this morning and then we're going to have an extended Examination of the kingdom hence the kingdom in focus Luke chapter 17 Verses 20 and 21 The New American Standard says this Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, look, here it is, or there it is, for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. You could keep your finger there or just go back to Daniel chapter two. I want to remind you of a great truth that God has, and it is a kingdom truth. And it's found in Daniel chapter two. Let me kind of rehearse the background here. Daniel and all the Israelites have been shuttled to the country of Babylon. They've been put into captivity because a guy by name of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has captured them and taken many of them back to a place called Babylon, or we would think of it as modern-day Iraq. And while there, Daniel, amongst some of his friends, are lifted up into high positions within Nebuchadnezzar's government. And we start off in Daniel 2, verse 1. It says, Now in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. Now I'm going to cut to the chase here. Nebuchadnezzar had these dreams. He didn't remember what the dream was precisely, so he calls in his wise men. He calls in his counselors, and he tells them, I had a dream. Not only do I want you to interpret that dream, but I want you to tell me what the dream was. That's kind of hard. I mean, you can kind of bluff your way through an interpretation. But you can't bluff your way through what the dream was. And his high man, his counselor said, well, no man can do that. And so Nebuchadnezzar was gonna have them all executed, including Daniel and his three buddies, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Every one of them was gonna be just put to death, because you can't do what I asked you to do, you're fired. Not only that, you're dead. And so word got back to Daniel that this was the case. And let me pick it up in verse 25. After a series of Daniel bargaining a little bit, he got a 24 hour reprieve for all of them. Verse 25, then Ariak, Ariak was Nebuchadnezzar's henchman. He was his kind of like, go get him, Ariak, and take care of him, do him in. Whatever Nebuchadnezzar needed in the way of physical bruteness, Ariak would do it. Verse 25, Then Ariok hurriedly brought Daniel into the king's presence and spoke to him as follows, I have found a man among the exiles of Judah who can make the interpretation known to the king. And the king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belshazzar, Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen and its interpretation? Daniel answered before the king and said, As for the mystery about which the king has inquired, neither wise men, conjurers, magicians, nor diviners are able to declare it to the king. There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days. Remember that, what will take place in the latter days. This was your dream and the visions in your mind while on your bed. And so he goes on and talks more. And now he comes down to verse 36. I'm skipping around a little bit. I want to ultimately get to verses 44 and 45. Verse 36, this was the dream, now we shall tell its interpretation before the king. So Daniel's already told what the dream was, and it was basically a dream of a statue made of gold for the head, silver around its breast parts, bronze, and then bronze and clay, or iron and clay at the lower extremities. So you got this weird looking statue made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay, going from top to bottom. Well, what is that all about? Well, Daniel's gonna give the interpretation of that in verse 36. Verse 37, you, O king, are the king of kings to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the strength, and the glory. And wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, he has given them into your hand and has caused you to rule over them all. Interesting, he has caused, God has caused you to rule. It's God's authority, God's privilege to cause a ruler to rule. You are the head of gold, verse 39. And after you, there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, then another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth. Then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron, as much as iron crushes and scatters all things. So like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces. verse 41, and in that you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron. It will be a divided kingdom, but it will have in it the toughness of iron inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle. And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, and 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. And 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. Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, and the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future, so the dream is true in its interpretation. is trustworthy, verse 46. Then Nebuchadnezzar fell to his face and did homage to Daniel and gave orders to present him an offering of fragrant incense. And then the king answered and said to Daniel, verse 47, surely your God is a God of gods and of lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries since you have been able to reveal this mystery. Wow. Daniel chapter two, verse 44. Here's the point I really want to emphasize. Here's this statute depicting with different metals, gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay, these different nations getting in more inferior, the further down from gold all the way down to iron and clay. All these different empires are depicted But there's one empire that's going to crush them all. One kingdom that's gonna crush them all. Verse 44, 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. But the point is, God has a kingdom. He has a kingdom that will last forever. The point of this passage is to put that kingdom in focus. When Jesus comes along, Jesus was speaking nothing but of this kingdom. In Matthew chapter three, verse two, Jesus says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Or in Matthew 4.17, from that time Jesus began to preach and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew 10, as you go preach saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew 24, 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. or Acts 19, verse eight, and he entered the synagogue, this would be Paul, and continues speaking out boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. This kingdom is so massive and so all-encompassing that Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, 33, seek ye first this kingdom and his righteousness. As you go through the Gospel of Luke, and I have all these verses marked, there's a whole list of them, as long as my arm, where again, Jesus preached the kingdom over and over again. He tells us not only to seek it first, as this verse says, Matthew 6, 33, but he tells us in the Lord's Prayer to the first thing we are to pray for, your kingdom come, thy will be done. I agree with author Michael Vlock, who's become, he's a theologian. He's one of those living theologians. He's actually a hero. These different theologians are heroes of mine. Matthew Vlock says, and I agree, the theme of the kingdom of God is the theme of the Bible. that everything else in the Bible feeds into the concept of the kingdom of God. From Genesis through Revelation, it's all about His kingdom. We're going to define that here in a moment, but I want you to understand that the theme of the Bible is not salvation, it's not redemption, it's not man's sin, it's not anything else, but the big banner theme is the kingdom of God. Everything else feeds into that in one way or another. And so that's what we wanna talk this morning. We wanna talk about this kingdom, which is already here, but yet not yet. It's already here, but not totally yet. It is with us, it is in us, it's a part of us, but yet we haven't seen the total reality of it. If churches and pastors and Bible teachers today ever address the subject of the kingdom, it's very, very vaguely, it's very, very foggily, if that's a word, foggily. very hazy. There's much confusion about the subject. When we speak of a king and a kingdom, that's foreign to our American ears, as I said earlier, because we were a country born out of a revolution against a king, King George III, to be precise. And when we think of kings, we think of pomp and circumstance and glory and thrones. We think of power and authority. And we here in America kind of stiff on that. We don't like any one person to get that much authority and power. But there is a king who has that power and who has that authority, who has come and is coming again, and his name is Jesus. In fact, Romans chapter 11 speaks of this king. Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments. That's a kingly thing. And unfathomable his ways. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor? Or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Or Isaiah 40 verse 12. Speaking of God, who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens by a span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance, and the hills in a pair of scales?" In other words, there is a person who is not only Creator, but he is also the King. Job 42 says, Verse two, Job 42.2, I know, Job says, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. That's a great king. No purpose of yours can be thwarted. Or Psalm 33.11, we read this morning, the counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart from generation to generation. Or David says in 1 Chronicles 29, verse 10, Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth. Thine is the dominion, O Lord, and thou dost exalt thyself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all, and in your hand is power and might. It lies in your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. Now therefore our God we thank you and praise your glorious name When we were in England we had the chance to go to the Queen's I think was her birthday party so to speak in London and We watched all these soldiers dressed in red uniforms and white pants and boots and gold. And some were riding horses and some were marching and some were playing instruments. And there was great fanfare and great pomp and great circumstance. And the crowds lined the streets all in honor of Queen Elizabeth at that time. And you never see anything like that in this country. And it was a privilege to be there and to see that. And admittedly, it sent goose bumps up my spine. This is the homage that is being given to the royal family. Of this country now, I know that it's kind of a fake royalty It's not they don't have a lot of they have some authority but not much and it's not the same as in other cultures But nonetheless, they know how to put on a party for the Queen over there they know how to do it, right and When we see the life of Jesus Never was that kind of pomp and circumstance ever given to him at his first advent But at his second advent, and we'll talk more about this later, there will be some pomp and some circumstance, and it will be glorious. I want us to understand that when we speak of the kingdom, and we've already said this, that the kingdom of God is the grand theme of scripture and the solution. Oh, I like this. Block says, The kingdom of God is the grand theme of scripture and the solution for all that is wrong. I love that. I thought that was a stupendous statement. Because everything that is wrong in the world today will be made right when the fullness of the kingdom comes in. That's glorious. So the kingdom is already here, but not totally fulfilled. It's already here, it's in you and me who know Christ. Isaiah 9 points out that there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace Or on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. I mean if you have a king like that All wrongs will be made right there will be no more wrong. There will be no more sin and so In speaking of this kingdom, we want to understand that this kingdom, and when we think of God's kingdom, think of it, it's his rule, God's rule over all things. But there are two aspects to this kingdom. There are two aspects. First, there's a universal or external aspect of this kingdom, over which we call its creation. That he is the king of the universe. He is the king of everything and everyone. Everything and everyone in the universe at all times, from their creation to the end of their lives or existence is under his absolute rule. We live in a world that's under his authority. But there was a thing called the fall. And the fall, which was brought on by the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, This kingdom, as a result of the fall, as we read back in Genesis 3, has been in rebellion against its king. And the leader of that rebellion is a guy by the name of Satan. And the rebellion is ultimately going to be unsuccessful and totally quenched and destroyed. But in the meantime, this one called Satan remains in violent rebellion against the king, who is the king overall. And the king himself has even cursed his own creation. Did you know that? This creation has been cursed. But one day that curse will be over, it will end, and Satan and all of his minions will be cast into the lake of fire, and they will be ultimately, eternally put out of existence, or at least in our presence, they'll still be in existence to be more accurate. And the Lord will destroy, ultimately, this creation. After He rules for a thousand years, ultimately this creation itself, Peter says in 2 Peter 3, will be destroyed, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth to take its place, where God will be king over all, and everything is merged into oneness. So there's, first of all, there's, first of all, a physical creation, a tangible kingdom. There's a physical side to the kingdom, but there is also a spiritual side to the kingdom. There's two aspects to this kingdom. There's the physical side, and then there's the spiritual side. And the spiritual side is internal. It's personal. And Christ becomes the ruler by by recreation within our souls, by being born again. And unless you are first born again, in fact, Jesus tells a guy by the name of Nicodemus, that unless, he says to Nicodemus, truly, truly, unless you are born again, Nicodemus, you will in no wise see or enter, I'm paraphrasing here, John 3, 3, and you won't see the kingdom of God. Entry into this kingdom is by means of a spiritual rebirth, or being born again. So there's a physical side and there's a spiritual side. And Jesus says this spiritual side of the kingdom, which you can't see, you can't see it today. There's no pomp and circumstance in the spiritual side of the kingdom. There will be in the physical side. But in the spiritual side of the kingdom, it starts off, Jesus says, like small as a mustard seed, but it keeps growing and growing and growing and expanding and expanding. even as a piece of leaven. He likens the kingdom to leaven at one point, where it keeps expanding and expanding until it finally reaches its maximum expansion, when all the elect and all the redeemed are brought into this kingdom, that are going to be brought into the kingdom, both from the Gentile side and the Jewish side. And then the Lord comes back and he reigns for a thousand years. And then after that, as I've already suggested, that this world is destroyed and there's a new heavens and a new earth and everything, both the physical and the spiritual are kind of, I don't know how else to say it, merge into one existence, one kingdom that's both physical and spiritual at the same time with the new heavens and the new earth. That's the kingdom. So the kingdom is both physical and it's spiritual, The kingdom is both about nations and individuals. It's not just about individuals, it's about nations. We see that during the millennial kingdom. The kingdom is, has centrally Israel. And the kingdom, the coming of this millennial kingdom is linked to Israel's acceptance of the Messiah. Now, If you go to some churches or some seminaries or schools today, bad theology will tell you that this kingdom is some kind of merely just an inner heart feeling. It's a wispy inner heart feeling. That's all the kingdom of God is, is just this feeling, this inner heart feeling. That's the kingdom of God, they say. But that's not the kingdom that the Bible describes. And so, when we come to our text for today, bear in mind that the Jews, and I'll get there, there's just two verses, so it won't take me long. And we'll go into this more next week as we look at verses 22 to the end of the chapter, which kind of gets into this a little bit more, and I can hardly wait to get there. But for today, just two verses, 20 and 21, and when we come to these verses, bear in mind that the Jews in Jesus' day They had a high expectation for the coming of the kingdom to happen really, really soon. In fact, we could talk about different people. There was a guy by the name of Joseph of Arimathea, of whom Luke chapter 23 says he was a man from Arimathea, Joseph, a city of the Jews, and it says, and he was waiting for the kingdom of God. He was like Joseph of Arimathea was like every other Jew in that day. They were waiting and waiting for decades and for centuries. When is it gonna come? When is it gonna come? And Jesus comes along and he's talking about this kingdom all the time, all the time, all the time. And when the king did come, when king Jesus did come, he didn't look like a king. He didn't have the pomp and circumstance. He didn't bring the kinds of signs they expected. He didn't look kingly like. In fact, the religious leaders in Jesus' days, they were convinced that he was a phony and a fraud. And so they mocked him, they tried to trip him up at every time they were meeting with him. The only time they would ask him a question was only when they wanted to try to mess with him and try to trip him up and try to make him look like a fool. And so the ultimate mockery was they put him on a cross, and on that cross they put a sign, here's Jesus who's king of the Jews. But they wanted to even change that. Pilate wouldn't do it. Just don't put that, he says he's the king of the Jews. He's not really the king. Pilate says, well, what I have written, I have written. Which was far closer to the truth than what the Pharisees wanted to say. So here is this kingdom. And Jesus talked about it all the time. So we come to our text. Bear in mind that the religious leaders on this occasion are coming with mockery and disdain. When you read these verses, these questions coming from the religious leaders, read it with what I believe to be a sense of mockery and disdain and trickery, as Jesus is constantly talking about this kingdom. So if you're not there yet already, go back to Luke chapter 17. And Jesus is going to clarify this week, and as we get into next week, verses 22 to the end of the chapter, He's going to clarify what this kingdom really is, because there was a lot of confusion on the part of the religious leaders. Phyllis and the ladies are doing every Monday night a book entitled Unmet Expectations. That's the title of the book. And so they're having a little discussion from week to week from the scriptures, as led by this book and through Phyllis, about the whole issue of unmet expectations. We all have these false expectations of the way things ought to be. Or when things don't go our way, our expectations are dashed and hurt. Well, this is true of the Pharisees and the religious leaders in that day. They had a certain expectation because their thinking was false. Sometimes our expectations are wrong because we have their false expectations. We're thinking wrongly about something and having the wrong expectation. And so as we come to the text, I want you to follow along in your outline there in the back of your bulletin. And we have several points here. The first point, as we get into the text here, Luke 17, verses 20 and 21, the first point I want us to note is the interest in the kingdom, the first part of verse 20. It says there, Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, Again, the Pharisees are coming to Jesus saying, you keep talking about a kingdom, you keep preaching about a kingdom, you keep saying that you're a king, and that there's a kingdom. Well, where is it? Where is it, Jesus? Tell us where your kingdom is, because again, they have faulty expectations. John 3, verse 3, Jesus told Nicodemus, one of the great teachers of the Jews, let me just read the verse this time instead of trying to quote it and I misquote it. John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said to him, to Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. I guess that's what I said earlier. I thought I butchered it more than that, but I didn't. If you don't believe and trust in me, you will not even be able to see the kingdom of God. Their expectations for a kingdom were based on, as we're gonna see here in a minute, it was based on some truth, as we're gonna see, but the timing of it all was awry. Now, bear in mind, Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless you're born again, you can't see the kingdom of God. But the religious leaders in Jesus' day didn't think that they needed a savior. They just wanted a reigning king who would kick out the Romans. The religious leaders in Jesus' day weren't interested in a spiritual kingdom. They were interested only in a physical, tangible kingdom. They thought they were already the people of God by race and religion and ceremony and circumcision and all of that. They thought, oh, we're already the people of God. Why do we need a Savior? We're already doing the right things in regard to our spiritual health. We don't need a Savior. By the way, so on one hand, the religious leaders in Jesus' day were looking for a physical, tangible kingdom. I would say that most pastors and Bible teachers in our day are not looking for a physical kingdom. They're looking for just this wispy spiritual kingdom that they talk about, without the physical side of it. You see what I'm saying? So the people in Jesus' day only saw the physical side as coming, they didn't see the spiritual side. The people who teach the Bible in our day only see the spiritual side, but not the physical side. You see what I'm saying, the difference there? And so we call a lot of these people all millennialists because they don't believe in a literal reign of Christ, physically I mean, and tangibly, from Israel in Jerusalem. They don't see that. And so in Jesus' day, the religious leaders expected the Messiah to come and set up a kingdom. They were not interested in a spiritual reality. They overlooked passages like Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have gone astray and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity. They just blindly read over those passages. And what does that have to do with the cost of beans in China? They didn't, or Psalm 22, which talked about Jesus on the cross being crucified. They just ignored those passages, even as Jews today ignore those passages today. They just read over them. It's like they're not even there. And so the Old Testament though, did speak of a coming Messiah. And when that Messiah came, the religious leaders in Jesus knew a lot of truth, though. They knew, for instance, as Isaiah predicted, that nature will be reconciled. They knew that there would be earthquakes. They knew that there'd be a time of peace and joy and comfort and truth. All of that at the time of the reign of the Messiah. They expected those things. They saw that those things were gonna happen because they saw those things in the Old Testament. Keep your finger here in Luke 17. Go back if you can find the book of Joel. You know where the book of Joel is? Amos, Joel, Obadiah. James, yeah, see, I can even have a Bible drill here. Joel chapter two, you got Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, right, Daniel, Hosea, and then Joel. Daniel, Hosea, if you can find Daniel, you just go two books to your right, and there's Joel. Joel chapter two. Let me just read a few of these. They knew passages. Just get a sense of this. This is one of the minor prophets who talked about this coming kingdom. Go to Joel chapter one real quick. Joel chapter one, verse 15. I'm just gonna skip through some of these. Joel 1.15. Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is near. That's the day of his vengeance, the day of the Lord. And it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Go over to chapter two and verse one. 2.1 of Joel, blow a trumpet in Zion and sound the alarm on my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. Surely it is near, a day of, verse two, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, as the dawn is spread over the mountains. So there was a great and mighty people. There has never been anything like it, nor will there be anything, again, after it. to the years of many generations. Go down to verse 10, chapter two. Before them the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. He's describing the events of the day of the Lord. By the way, all these events we see during the tribulation when we've been studying the book of Revelation. The day of the Lord, as Joel is picturing it, is what you see happening between Genesis chapter six and Genesis chapter 18. excuse me, Revelation six and Revelation 18. Right, thank you, Phyllis. Between Revelation six and, my mouth gets ahead of my brain sometimes, and that's dangerous. When my mouth gets ahead of my brain, I'll say foolish things. I gotta keep my mouth behind my brain, okay? Between Revelation six and 18, there is that period called the day of the Lord. And I hope all you out there listening will understand. We're talking about the book of Revelation reveals the things that Joel is talking about. So Joel 2, verse 10, there's earthquakes and the heavens are gonna tremble, the moon and the sun grow dark. All that's talked about in Joel. Go over to Joel 2, verses 30, 31, and 32. At the end of the chapter, Joel 2.30, and I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke. You see all that in the book of Revelation, do you not? Verse 31, the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there will be those who escape, and the Lord has the Lord has said, even among the survivors. Go to the end of chapter 3, Joel chapter 3. Joel concludes with what's going to ultimately happen in Israel. Joel 3.18, and it will come about in that day that the mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah will flow with water, and a spring will go out from the house of the Lord to water the valley of Shittim. Egypt will become a waste, and Eden will become a desolate wilderness because of the violence done to the sons of Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem for all generations. And I will avenge their blood, which I have not avenged, for the Lord dwells in Zion." That's what ultimately is going to happen at the very end of the book of Joel. So you've got all these bad things happening, the celestial events in the sky, the sun being blotted out, the moon turning to blood, and there's earthquakes and all these things. Well, that's what the religious leaders were expecting to see. Later on, they asked Jesus for a sign. They're asking for celestial signs. They're asking for the signs that, for instance, Joel is talking about. But Jesus just comes along, and as deity, he walks on the water, and he heals the blind, and he raises the dead, and he does all these miracles. Those weren't the signs they were interested in. They wanted celestial signs that were associated with him coming back and bringing in the kingdom to Israel. Those were the signs. They weren't looking for his little miracle signs. They didn't care about that. at least in their mind. So we see the expectations for the kingdom, but then the evidence of the kingdom, and I've kind of already gone into this, the evidences of the kingdom are displayed like, for instance, in Joel chapter two. I got ahead of myself. Their expectations were awry, were bogus. They had the wrong expectations. And we're gonna see this more and more. They were looking for a second coming. They didn't realize that there were actually two comings and Jesus was just on his first coming. So the interest in the kingdom was great. They just couldn't comprehend the two aspects of the kingdom two advents of Christ. They only saw one advent of Christ, but they should have seen two, because it is there in the Old Testament, a suffering Messiah and a reigning Messiah. But they just blotted out the suffering Messiah and only focused on the reigning Messiah. They didn't understand a suffering Messiah. How could the king suffer? How could he be destroyed like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 discusses? They just didn't wanna look at that. Don't confuse me with the truth. Just give me what I want. Give me what I want to expect. This is what I expect, now give it to me. This takes me to the second point real quick. Oh, by the way, before I go there, you remember in Isaiah 61, Jesus read this in one of the synagogues that he went to, and he only read part of the verse, only the part that related to his first advent. For instance, Jesus read Isaiah 61, one and two, the spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Jesus. This is about me, Jesus said. Because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And then he stopped reading. when he was in that synagogue. But the very next portion of verse two, the second half of that verse, he stopped halfway through verse two, but then it goes on, and the day of vengeance of our God to comfort all. See, he didn't come for the day of vengeance, that's the second advent, when he brings vengeance. His first advent, he doesn't bring vengeance, he brings, healing and teaching and preaching and pointing people to himself. He's trying to build up the spiritual kingdom of God, one by one, soul by soul. Verse 3 of that very same text is a second advent truth, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes. The oil of gladness instead of mourning. He's going to do that at the end of the tribulation. He's going to bring gladness and glory to Israel. The mantle of praise instead of the spirit of feigning. So they will be called the oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. That will happen in Israel at the end of the tribulation as you go into the millennium. So you're interested in Isaiah chapter 61, verses one through three, verses one and two A relate to his first advent. From two B, verse two B and verse three, that's his second advent. Just all mashed together in like three verses and you just read it and yet it's very important to understand that there are two advents contained in those verses. Two comings of Christ. That takes us to the second point in your notes real quick here. The invisibility of the kingdom, verses 20B and 21A. Look at those verses. In verse 20, at the end of verse 20, and he, Jesus answered. He's gonna answer their confusion. They're asking about the kingdom. When's the kingdom coming? Jesus is gonna address their question. And he answered them and said, look, guys, oh, that's in the white there, it's not actually in the print, but I'm sure might, look guys, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. Now stop there. What? Well, there are signs, we saw some of those signs in the book of Joel, that's related to the second coming. That's related to the second advent. But with the first advent, you're not gonna see this kingdom with your eyes, because it's internal, it's spiritual. They wanted this physical kingdom. And so in verse 20, interesting, he says, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. That word observed is a Greek word, paraartesis. Parateis, I'm not pronouncing it right. Parateisarsis, that's something like that. It's the Greek word, which is translated in the New American with the word observed. In the New International, it's the word visibly. And it's a technical term. It's only used here in the New Testament, which speaks of someone who's using signs to calculate future events, or calculating future events by observing the stars. It's in the present tense. So like, there would be soothsayers and these people who would try to calculate events by looking at the stars and the stars would, they would observe the stars and say, well, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen. And he's saying, look, you can't calculate this first coming, and he has the first coming in mind here, verse 20, the kingdom of God, the spiritual kingdom, is not coming with signs to be observed. You can't see that, oh, it's coming. Now, for the second advent, the second part of the kingdom, you'll be able to see all these sign things that like Joel talks about. So this introduction to the kingdom here, he's talking about Those signs that they were looking for, but he gave them signs of his deity, as I've already spoken. He did healings, and he cast out demons, and he raised the dead, and he fed the multitudes, and he walked on the water. All these signs of his deity, they rejected those signs. So, He was introducing them to the spiritual aspect of the kingdom. He goes on to talk about this in the first part of verse 21. Nor will they say, look, here it is, or there it is. You can't come to the spiritual kingdom as Jesus was building this kingdom that he described as a mustard seed that's gonna be expanding and expanding and expanding until it grows to a big tree. You can't see it. It's growing, it's expanding, one person, one soul at a time, it's building, it's growing, it's over time, over the centuries, he came, he died on the cross, and for 2,000 years, his kingdom, his spiritual kingdom is growing, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing, it's expanding, you don't see it, it's invisible. You can't say, well, look, here it is, or look, there it is, you can't do that. He says there in verse 21, it's intangible, the intangibility of the kingdom, Again, the religious leaders missed the two aspects of the kingdom. There's the spiritual aspect and there's the physical aspect. Jesus told, remember Jesus told Pontius Pilate as he was on trial, John chapter 18, he says, my kingdom is not what? It's not of this world. Not yet. Right now it's not of this world. Because I'm only interested in seeing people come into this kingdom one person at a time. It's internal. It's not of this world. It's internal. It's spiritual. You can't see it. So here in verses 20 and 21, Jesus is talking about the aspect of his kingdom that's focused on his first coming, his first advent. And the religious leaders were looking for the wrong aspect. They were looking for the wrong face. And only those who are part of the personal kingdom by faith in Christ will be in the universal kingdom, because the spiritual kingdom is growing and growing, one soul at a time, and one day the last soul that is to be saved will be saved. and amongst the Gentiles and then amongst the Jews, they will receive their Messiah and the final soul, both Jew and Gentile is saved and Jesus comes back. And all the people who go into the millennial kingdom are believers. They are saved. They are glorified. Those who go into the millennium will be glorified. There will be people from the tribulation. All those who are unbelievers will be put to death. And there will be babies born during the millennium that will not even trust on the Lord. That's a sad thing that there'll be people born in the millennial who will refuse to take Jesus as their savior still. So Jesus says finally, and we'll bring it to a close here. He talks about the internalization of this kingdom. It speaks of its essence and it's the entrance, which I've already addressed. I'm doing a lot of repetition this morning, but repetition is the mother of learning, is it not? You repeat, you repeat, you do that with. your own kids, or you do that when you're teaching in a classroom, you repeat, you repeat, because by virtue of repetition, you pound the truth, the nail of truth into a person's mind and heart so that it goes in once, twice, and it's firmly embedded. Truth has to be repeated in order to be firmly embedded into our minds. I need that. So the internalization of the kingdom, he says at the end of verse 21, for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. Literally, it's inside of you. Or literally you could say, inside you it is. It's in you. And now he's not saying this to the Pharisees who did not know Christ. He's not saying it's in you. He's just saying in a general way, the kingdom of God is inside of those who by faith have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, John 3, 3. Unless you are born again, you won't see this kingdom. The kingdom of God is in you. The Pharisees balked at that. They laughed at that. Beginning in verse 22, Jesus is going to go into a description of his second coming. He's not going to bypass that. He's going to say, yeah, there is something that's going to happen yet in the future. He's going to describe that in verses 22 through 37, and that'll be for next Sunday. So you got to come back and bring a friend and learn. Before I close, I just want to say, if you're here this morning and you do not know the King, then you do not see this kingdom as Jesus has described it. You need to know the King in order to be in the kingdom. You need to trust on the king in order to be in his future kingdom. If you don't enter the spiritual kingdom, you'll never see the physical kingdom. Do you understand what I'm saying? That's a great reminder to check yourselves and to see if you're in the faith. To know that you are one of the kings. You are one of the king's kids, or are you not? Or are you not?