I was thinking back over my years of being raised in church, and I can't remember a time when I've ever heard a message explaining how that theme of the kingdom of God is connected to the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. We often talk about the Gospel only in individual terms of, this is what Jesus Christ did for you and you need to repent of your sins and accept it. And that is true. But very often we forget that there is a collective, family or kingdom aspect to the Good News. And that's what I want to talk about this morning. Then I want to ask ourselves a little bit this morning and then even more tonight in a small group. What does that got to do with my life right now? That Jesus rules and reigns and that he has a redemptive rule over all things. And we'll discuss a few of those things. The kingdom is at hand. This is good news, according to Jesus. And again, look at this directly from your text, where it says in verse 35 of Matthew 9, Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. In other words, Jesus is going around and He's saying, this kingdom that you have so long anticipated, See, what do you mean that they've so long anticipated? Well, going back to the time, a thousand years earlier, where David was king of Israel, God had come to Nathan the prophet and said that this is the kingdom of God, and that a Messiah, an anointed one, will come to rule over this kingdom, and that he will rule forever when he does come. And so the Israelites, throughout that next thousand years, they were looking, always looking for that future kingdom, for that day when the Messiah would come and He would set them free from bondage to other countries. We've talked about this before, but the history of Israel throughout the Old Testament is a very sketchy one. And very often it's easy to look at that and say, where is God in all of this? If these are God's people and this is His kingdom, why are they suddenly being overtaken by the Assyrians, or by the Babylonians, or by the Medo-Persian Empire, or by the Greek Empire, or by the Roman Empire? It's just one right after another where they are dominated by the kingdom of somebody else. And it's exciting news to the Jews when Jesus finally comes in their synagogues, in their places of worship, And He says to them, the Kingdom of God is at hand. But I want to point out here at this point, before we go further into discussing what this is and what that means for us, that this Kingdom, as Jesus brought it, was not the kind of Kingdom that people expected. And you just think, if you were a Jew at that time, and you had lived in the Kingdom of David, for example, what kind of Kingdom is that? Well, it's an earthly Kingdom. It has geographic boundaries. Often you read in scripture and it says that the kingdom extended from this mountain in the north to this place in the south, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And that was the kingdom. So when Jesus comes, they expect if he's the real Messiah, it's good news because we're going to get our land back. The nation of Israel throughout history was a political kingdom. It was an economic kingdom. It was a social kingdom. And using all these terms to just describe the kind of kingdom that we think of when we think of a kingdom. And so when Jesus says, the kingdom in me is here at hand, it's just around the corner, this is good news for the Jews as they understood it. Because they're thinking on one day, Palm Sunday, He's come. And they say, Hosanna! Glory to God! Here is the Messiah who is going to destroy Rome and set us free, and this is good news! And then a few days later, they're nailing Jesus to a cross, the same people. Why? Because Jesus didn't bring the kind of kingdom that they expected. But I want to show you this morning from God's Word how the fact that God brought a different kind of kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ, how that means good news for all of us. You see, if Jesus had come and brought a political or an economic kingdom or a geographic kingdom to Israel, That may be good news if you're a Jew here this morning and there are a couple of you. That would be good news for you. But how would that be good news for the rest of us? You're not an Israelite. How is that good news for you that Jesus rules over a geographic kingdom over there that you're not a part of? So we talk about the kingdom of God in terms of the gospel, the good news this morning. It's exciting to know that the kingdom comes in such a way that we are set free from every other thing that would rule over us. I want to put this theme before you this morning. Jesus' redemptive rule has far-reaching implications for the restoration of all things in Him. And I want you to think of it in terms of this, that the only alternative to Christ's kingdom is slavery. We'll talk about how, obviously, that means spiritual slavery. If Christ does not set you free, then you're not free. And Christ says that if the Son comes and sets you free, then you are free indeed. But I want you to also look at this passage with me and see how it's not limited to what we think of as spiritual freedom. How this Good News extends into every area of our life and renews and restores all of that. So, beginning back here in Matthew chapter 9, the Kingdom of God in the Gospel, the first thing I want you to see is that Jesus is King over spiritual deliverance. Jesus is King over spiritual deliverance. In other words, the only alternative to Jesus spiritually being King of your life is some alternative form of spiritual slavery. Let's look at this in the text. Beginning in verse 36 of Matthew 9, we read, When Jesus saw the crowds that followed Him, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And if we stop right there, the metaphor that Christ is using to describe these people who are just wandering around following Him, is that they're harassed and helpless sheep. They're lost, they're confused. They don't know which way to turn, and if you know the nature of sheep, they just kind of go wherever. If there's no shepherd to lead them to good pasture or to water, they just go off into the thicket and get caught and die, or they go wandering off cliffs somewhere. And Jesus is using an illustration here that we can understand that when He sees people, He's seeing into their hearts and He's seeing that because of the lack of spiritual leadership that was going on in the kingdom of men during this time period, the Jews were just confused and helpless and harassed. They were harassed because the spiritual leaders of the time, much like many of the spiritual leaders of our day today, are just creating rules. They're just saying, if you can do this and this and this, and you can follow these 600 plus precepts that we've made up, if you can do all these things and you're a good Christian, then wonderful, we'll accept you, and God will accept you. And the problem is they feel harassed because they say, I can't do those things, and neither can you, and neither can I. And Jesus comes and He brings a message of grace and deliverance, where the spiritual leaders before Him had only brought a message of Jesus as lawgiver. Jesus now comes and says, Jesus as liberator. Sheep that are lost need a good shepherd to come and lay down His life for them. His next metaphor is that of a wheat field, basically. He's saying, look out at these people, and they're desperate. They're wandering blind and they want to know the truth. They want to be set free. And he compares them to a wheat field and says, they're ready for harvesting. I just need laborers to go and work. I just need people to go and share the good news of the kingdom, that the King has come. And in Him, you can be set free from slavery to all these other things, to all these other gods, to all these false idols. And then a third illustration that He uses of His power to be our spiritual liberator is perhaps the most graphic, the most understandable. In verse 1, chapter 10, we read, And Jesus called to Him His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out. Then in verse 8, The fourth thing that He instructs them after saying, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, He says, cast out demons. It's a very graphic, visually represented example of the authority of Jesus Christ, this new King who has come. And no, He's not setting up a political or economic kingdom to subjugate people even further than what they already are. But He's come and said, I have power or authority over all these other gods, over all the demons that I have created. I have authority to say, go out of these people and leave them alone. As you read through the Gospels, there are many times that it's referred to as a sign of the fact that Jesus was the Anointed One, the Messiah, that He did something like casting out a demon. Because as Jesus says in His own words, you can't enter into the house of a strong man and cast him out of his own house unless you are stronger than he is. And what He's saying is, the power of God can't enter into a person and remove that demon and take control unless Jesus Christ is in fact more powerful than any other thing that could live there. And this is good news for us this morning. You could be sitting here saying, not just that I don't remember ever being demon-possessed, you could say, I know I've never been demon-possessed. And that's probably true for hopefully all of you, but at least most of you, that you've never actually been demon-possessed. But if you think in terms of Colossians 1, verses 13 and 14, this is something that is true of all of us. And hear these words, where Paul writes that Christ has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. You see, that right there is something that is true of all of us. that before Christ came and shone His light into our hearts, before His redemptive rule and His kingdom shone in our hearts, we didn't have this good news. We literally lived spiritually in a different kingdom, controlled by other things, things that were not good for us, that did not build us to be the people that we ought to be. They just destroyed us. Just like you see the examples of demon possession, how the demons use those bodies as a vessel, essentially, for themselves to just wreak havoc. And spiritually, that's the way you and I were before Christ came and said, here's my kingdom, spiritually, and I will redemptively rule over you. And by the way, how does Christ do that? I want to root in our thinking that the spiritual aspect of God's kingdom is the preeminent one. It's foremost. Because we can't reap any of these other benefits in His kingdom if we aren't in His kingdom. And the way to enter His kingdom is not the way you would enter a human kingdom. I know we don't think of America in terms of a kingdom, but it's a country, it's similar. But think in terms of America. How do you become a citizen in the kingdom of America or the country of America? We're talking about this a lot right now in the news. You just jump or swim across the river and then you're here. But no, you're not really a citizen in that kingdom by being geographically there. How do they do that? They have to get paperwork. It's a long period of waiting, and it's stressful. It's a long process, and taking tests, and citizenship classes, getting your photo taken, and all these things, and showing that you're, in a sense, worthy to be members of this kingdom or this country. And it's good news that Christ didn't just bring that kind of kingdom, because then we'd all have to go through that process. of waiting and taking classes and proving to God we knew enough about His kingdom to be worthy of it. And Jesus just says, no, that's not how you enter into My kingdom. In fact, I do what is necessary for you to enter My kingdom. And it's not just what we think of as, well, He's elected and He rules over us and He just kind of domineers us and then we're in His kingdom. We take the lumps and we take the good and that's His kingdom. Because the only way that anyone enters Jesus' kingdom is the fact that the King came in person, and He, the King, laid down His life for His subjects. And the only way that anyone becomes a citizen in His kingdom spiritually is because the King has died for you, and the King has risen again for you, and the King today lives for you. And by grace, through faith, allows you to enter His kingdom. not by anything you do, but simply by believing that he is the only king worthy of living in his kingdom. And that's what Paul means when he says that it's good news for us that this domain of Satan or darkness that we all lived in, that Christ has come and said, I proclaim to you forgiveness of sins because you can enter the kingdom simply by grace. Jesus is king over spiritual deliverance. Well, secondly, I want to go back to this text, and we're going to talk about two other things from these verses that may be new to some of you. And I want you to understand, the way I understand Scripture, these are part of the good news. And the reason why I teach this to you is so we don't either under-spiritualize the Christian kingdom, but neither do we over-spiritualize it. And some of you may be sitting there thinking, how do you over-spiritualize the kingdom of God? It's done all the time, and I think you'll see more what I'm talking about as we go through this. But the second area in which Jesus is King is that He is King over physical health and life. And just like before I said that the only alternative to Jesus being King in your life spiritually is for you to be enslaved to some other God, or to some group of idols that you serve on a functional basis. And the same is true in a physical life, that the only alternative to Jesus being king over your physical health and life is for you to be enslaved to physical decay or disease or death. Now, understand that we all, in this fallen world, we will experience those things. But also understand that when the final form of Jesus' kingdom comes, there will be no sickness, there will be no disease and there will be no death. And that says something to us about what Jesus wants to do even now to display the kingdom, because the things that are chosen here to illustrate the kingdom of heaven is at hand is just that. These are illustrations of what it means that God's redemptive rule has come into our world, into the kingdom of men. In chapter 9, verse 35, where we begin our reading, I think it's interesting that these two things are put next to each other, where it says that Jesus went teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. Those two things, the idea of proclaiming the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction, which refers to, basically, the first term refers to terminal illnesses or long-term illnesses, and the second is used more generically, and Jesus has authority over all of those things. And it's interesting to me that we so often, in Christianity, we see the first part, oh, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. That just means if you repent of your sins and accept Jesus as your Savior, you can go to heaven when you die. Well, it does mean that. But does it just mean that? And the answer is no. The answer is no, because the redemptive rule of Christ through His death and resurrection, it has come in a degree. How does He demonstrate that His rule has come? By going to a paralytic and saying, you've never walked in your life. Get up and walk. And He does. Or to going over here to the dead daughter of a Roman ruler and saying, you're only sleeping. Get up. and she breathes again. Or going to someone that just has the flu or the bronchitis or strep throat and saying, you're healed with a word. It demonstrates that Jesus is King over physical health and life, and that our peace physically is connected to what He is doing in His Kingdom. If you'd like, I want you to turn to First Corinthians, chapter 15, and I want you to see how Paul connects this kingship over spiritual life with kingship over physical life. In First Corinthians, chapter 15, beginning in verse 22, for as in Adam all die. All he's saying is, if you're born a human being, you're going to die. As in Adam, all die. But he says, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ, the firstfruits, that was his resurrection from the dead after his crucifixion. and then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when Christ delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power, for He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for God has put all things in subjection under His feet." You see what he's saying? This is tremendous news for us this morning, because essentially what Paul is saying is any enemy to you living the kind of life that God originally created you to live, any enemy is an enemy of His. And if that enemy is physical ailment that keeps you from living fully the life that God wants you to live, that disease or that affliction is an enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Death, physical death, which we will all suffer at some point, is something that would, if that were the end, it would keep us from seeing the glory of God in Christ. But God says, death is my enemy. And those who are in Christ will not suffer death as if that's the end, because you, like Christ, will see the resurrection. I think that's exciting news, to not get this tunnel vision that God is only and always about our spiritual life as if that has no effect on our body or our physical health. We've talked about this before, but the redemptive rule of Christ over physical health and even life itself is exciting because it says that His kingdom is not an ordinary kingdom. Because you look at an ordinary kingdom and what happens? The people on top, they have lots and lots and lots of money and power. So they get the best health care that money can afford and the best prescription drugs that money can afford. And they're usually pretty healthy. Even if it involves a number of surgeries and a number of drugs, they're usually pretty healthy. But these people, they're homeless and poor and live on the street or in some section of town that we just really don't care to go to. They don't have that kind of provision for them physically or health-wise. A lot of times we look at people in our society, like the Terry Shivos, and we think it would be better if those people just die. I mean, they're a drain on society. They're just taking money that could be spent better other places. We look at babies that are still in utero and we say, that child, we know for a fact, or we're pretty sure, is going to be born with some kind of defect. So let's just end that life now and call it a choice. That's the kind of kingdom that we live in. And Christ says, no, that's not the kind of Kingdom that I have, that in no way demonstrates grace, mercy and love for the unlovely, which is exactly what Christ is demonstrating in His Kingdom, even physically. We've seen that Jesus is King over spiritual deliverance. We've seen that He's King over physical health and life. Well, finally here this morning, He's King over social reconciliation. And again, I would say it this way, the only alternative to Jesus' kingship in our social life, and you can think in terms of your neighborhood, or your workplace, or even your family. That's what we're talking about. The only alternative to Jesus being king and redemptively ruling in those relationships is for us to fight and to struggle and to war with each other in a multitude of ways socially. You say, where do you see this in the passage that Jesus is king over that sort of thing? Well, in chapter 10, in verse 7, as Jesus is instructing His disciples to go and proclaim, saying, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, or it's near, and it will come when Jesus Christ dies and is raised again. And then He gives those four statements. How do you demonstrate the message that the Kingdom is near? And this is kind of a review. Heal the sick, raise the dead, that's physical. Cleanse lepers, that's what we're going to talk about here, and cast out demons, that's the spiritual. So the one of the four of these that we haven't talked about yet is the cleansing of lepers. And I want you to think of the cleansing of lepers not so much in physical or health terms, but to think of it in social terms. Think about leprosy and that skin disease of boils and just nastiness and oozing. And I'm not going to go all into that, but you know, from the little bit you know, whether from scripture or from contemporary medical society, it's a gross thing. And those people are ostracized, particularly in the time of Christ. And by the way, how did Jesus cleanse lepers? Did he just stand at a distance and say, you have leprosy, be cleansed? And the answer is, and this is frequently found in the Gospels, Jesus went up to lepers and He touched them. He didn't have to touch them to heal them, because He healed a lot of other people without ever touching them. But what is Jesus demonstrating by actually physically touching them? I think it's more than just a physical healing. I think He's showing them that here is a group of people marginalized in society. They are ostracized. They are seen as the low of the low. They are worthless. The kingdom of God is for people like you, the scum of the earth kind of people. And Jesus goes up to those kinds of people and He touches them and He says, the kingdom is for people like you. So the Gospel, the Good News, is not just spiritual, as if that doesn't also influence our social life. There should be a radical demonstration of welcoming to the people that society considers to be the outcasts and the low of the low. Whether that's a different race of people, get over it. They have a soul just like you. Welcome them in Christ as Christ welcomed you. Whether they're a different social class, welcome them. Whether they're a different category of work, where you just look down on that occupation because you have a white collar job and you sit in an office and you make good money and they work their tail off out in the sun all day and don't make much money and they're a different group of people than you. And what Jesus is demonstrating as part of the good news is that His redemptive rule has radical implications for how we welcome other people, how we long for and how we actually promote social inclusion and social justice in our city. Again, as I said about physical ailments and death, those things are not a part of the Kingdom of God when it comes in its fullest. And there is no injustice socially. There is no ostracizing or marginalizing certain groups or categories of people in that Kingdom to come. And so, I think we're called in the Gospel, in the Good News, to share the Kingdom in the way that Christ did. And I understand that we don't have the direct authority that God gave to His disciples, where you could just go to a neighbor who is suffering from cancer and say, cancer, be gone. But you do have the power to pray. You do have the power to spiritually intervene for a physical ailment. Because in the Kingdom to come, there won't be cancer. There won't be heart disease or arthritis, and that's really good news. Instead of just looking across the tracks, figuratively speaking, at another group of people, or looking down on someone else at your workplace because of who they are or what they represent, the Kingdom Come means that we live that out now, and we reach out to people who are different than us. Instead of older people in the church looking at younger people and saying, oh, they're just young whippersnappers, wet behind the ears, all these clichés, Get involved in their lives because they have something to learn from you. And I mean that in a gracious sort of way, not that you have all the answers. I hope you understand that. The other way is true as well. Young people get involved in the lives of older people because they have even physical needs that they can't do for themselves. But you could easily just call a friend and say, hey, let's go over to Miss so-and-so's house because I know that she needs some stuff done. She needs her grass cut. And all of these things, if done in the name of Jesus Christ, are demonstrations of the good news. And the last thing I want is a one-dimensional church where we just show up for an hour on Sunday morning, we preach Christ, and we go out of here just completely unchanged. Because if we catch a glimpse of the beauty of a Savior who came to earth and said, I'm bringing a kingdom, but I'm bringing the kingdom by dying for you so that you can be a part of my kingdom, so that all things can be restored in me, that every enemy can be defeated. I'm an enemy of cancer. I am an enemy of racism. I'm an enemy of worshipping other gods, because none of those things will bring you lasting joy, and they blind us to the joy that's found in Christ. I want to read one verse in closing from Revelation chapter 11. This is exciting and encouraging to me as we look forward to this Kingdom where all things, spiritual, social, economic, political, all things belong to Christ. And Revelation 11.5 says, in a future time, we can say this, the Kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. And that's good news. Because when He reigns forever and ever, There will be no enemies to seeing the full beauty of the glory of God in the face of Christ. And so as a church today, we're going to talk a little bit about this tonight in our small group. What are the implications for how we minister to our community? How we flesh this out so we're ministering to their whole life. Where in Christian counseling, I'll ask somebody, what kind of sleep are you getting? What kind of prescription drugs are you taking right now? Are you exercising? You know why? Because all these things interact. We are many personality people. And when Christ comes, He comes to deliver us from enemies in all of His areas of personality. And I want you to, in closing, think to yourself, are there barriers in other areas of my life? And let's begin with the spiritual. You know, you may be here this morning and you're inquisitive about the Christian faith, but you're not going hard after looking for the beauty of the glory of God in Christ. And I encourage you this morning to see what kind of Savior God is. Because Christ is the King who laid down His life for lost sheep. He's the Good Shepherd who said, I will gladly die so that you can be redeemed. And then look from a passage like this that we discussed this morning just briefly and see that God does care about reordering everything about our lives so that the physical things are concerns spiritually. That we can minister to each other physically and not separate that from spiritual ministry. That we can minister to one another or to our community socially in the name of Christ, drawing them to the beauty of the unity that's found in Christ and in Christ alone. And that also is an important part of our ministry as a church and as you as believers. Lord God, we pray this morning Our Lord's Prayer. In that prayer, we read the words where He instructed us to pray, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And Lord, this is exactly what we're talking about this morning. That in heaven, there are no physical impediments to worshiping You with all of our might and with all of our soul and with all of our heart and strength. There are no social impediments to worshiping you. We're not trying to worship you, but being hindered by the fact that we know that someone sitting next to us is a racist hypocrite. Or that they look down on a certain group of people or a certain vocation of people. We close the Lord's Prayer by praying that yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. And I pray those two things in connection with our message this morning. Lord, your kingdom come. We know that your kingdom has drawn near because of the work of Christ. We know that we've been called to share the good news of this kingdom, that your redemptive rule delivers us from every idol that would enslave us spiritually, that ultimately your redemptive rule delivers us from disease and decay and death. that your redemptive rule delivers us from racism, or socialism, or economic elitism. And I pray that in the stillness of these moments, and then as we close, testifying through song, that you are our King, and we hail the power of your name as King. that right now you would make us aware of what distractions and what impediments need to be removed in our own lives so that we can worship you in the beauty of holiness without any enemy going undefeated by the one who is King. Amen.