I pray that the Lord would help
us and bless us as we turn together to John's Gospel in chapter 18.
And we'll look at some parts of verse 36. This issue of the kingdom of the Lord
Jesus is not of this world. Verse 36 in John 18, Jesus answered,
My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered
to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from
hence. It's not from here. It's not
from this world. and particularly my kingdom is
not of this world. The Lord Jesus is telling us
absolutely that he has a kingdom. He tells us later on in the next
verse that thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born. Jesus is a king, but he's not
the king of this world. As it says here, otherwise he
would be acting like a king in authority in this world. But
he is not from here. He is from the kingdom of heaven. And that's what I want to look
at this morning, these kingdoms of this world, the kingdom of
the pre-flood world, our kingdom, our world today, and the world
to come. and to look at how you moved
in the old world from Noah's pre-flood world to the world
of today and then how we move from this world today into the
kingdom of heaven. Now that's not to say that Jesus
is not the king of kings and the lord of lords here upon earth. He orders everything, but he
is not recognized as a king in this world. He wasn't recognized
by the Jews as their king. Very, very sadly, they had to
admit, we have no king but Caesar. That must have been a terrible,
embarrassing thing to have to say for a Jew that wanted to
have their own king like King David was, to have to say the
only king that we've got is Caesar, a Roman Gentile king, and yet
you see when Pilate says, behold your king, they say, away with
him, away with him. Jesus is not recognised as the
king of this world by the Jews all those years ago when Pilate
put up a big sign over the cross and accusation his charge Jesus
of Nazareth the king of the Jews the Jews wanted it changing they
said we don't want it to be written like it's truth we want it to
be written like that's what he says he is but Pilate says no
what I've written I've written It says, and it was overruled
by God, that he is the king of the Jews, and that is what Pilate
says is going to stay there on the cross. Jesus then is not recognized.
God is not recognized as the king of this world, even though
he has given the world very good laws, The laws of loving God
first and foremost, loving your neighbour. These commandments
are such a blessing. To worship God is so important. It's such a blessing compared
to what people do. They worship themselves. They
worship their pleasures. They worship their work. They
worship their families, their homes, their cars, their football,
their drugs, their drink, their vaping, their smoking, all these
other things. They worship all these other
things, but they don't give lasting happiness. They may give a vanishing
happiness, vanishing promise of heaven or vanishing promise
of paradise, but it disappears into thin air. It's not here
to stay. God has given us in love and
mercy Sunday, a Sabbath day, a Sunday to worship him, but
people say, no, it's time for me. I want to use that time for
myself. God has given us the commands
to acknowledge authority. To say,
yes, I have parents that I have to obey, which teaches us to
obey authorities, our teachers, our governments, and our God.
But people say, no, I've got a right to rebel. I want to do
as I want to do. God has given us the sanctity
of marriage, sanctity of life. He's given us, he gives us our
conception. He looks after us through our
lives. He takes us to the end of our lives. And people say,
no, I want to be in control of all that. It gives us trust and
sanctity in marriage. And yet people say, well, I want
my choice. If things get tough, then I'm
wanting to quit. Or if things come along that
are better, then I'll quit again. God gives us a command to be
honest in all of our business dealings, all of our business
affairs. And yet people say, no, someone's
got a lot more than me or too much I can take from them. It won't hurt if I have a little
bit. God has given us all sufficient
of all the things that we have need of for our good. And yet,
how many people say, no, I want a little more. Putin wants a
little more. He wants Ukraine. And you see,
all these things are the root cause of so much evil in the
world, so much trouble. And yet, Jesus comes as the God
of truth. He says, he tells Pilate, To
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth." There is a truth,
and Jesus is the witness of these things, to live a life that is
loving, telling the truth, telling the consequences of sin. doing
good and yet rejected by people where they said away with him,
away with him. But the sad thing is a life of
rejecting God is a life where our plans are frustrated, There's a saying, isn't there?
You say, I want, doesn't get. Children are to be taught to
be polite and to ask, and ask politely. But people say, I want.
Well, I want. We were told when we were children,
doesn't get. I want. And more and more leads
to a life of trouble. And that's why the world is in
such a big muddle. That's why there are wars. That's where
there are all these troubles in the world around us. And it's
why the world itself is going to end one day. This is a life
for each one of us that will come to an end and a world that
will come to an end as well. And what I want to look at is
that this has all happened before. Before the flood, the old world
was created. Created by God, the people were
instructed to obey him. They were instructed to keep
his laws and yet they disobeyed. And it wasn't very long before
murder occurred. It wasn't very long before people
saw all the ladies that there were in the world and they lusted
after them and married all sorts of them instead of just one husband
and one wife. And it wasn't very long after
that that the Bible declares that the world was filled with
violence. Here was a world, a kingdom,
that was to be destroyed by water. But God saw Noah. God had grace upon Noah, undeserved
favor Noah obtained from God. Noah and his family obtained
undeserved favor from God and God showed them that there was
a way of escaping from that old world into what is now our world. An ark was to be built And it
was a huge floating box that to me looks very much like
a coffin shape. Like a huge coffin that was floating
on the water. We read the Bible tells us that
it was covered with pitch. And the word for pitch in the
Bible is the same word as atonement. It was covered in a way that
when God looked at what was inside that ark, he looked at it as
if there was his forgiveness. When he looked down at all the
rest of the world, he saw sin uncovered. And that sin uncovered
led to the wrath of God and the destruction of all those people.
But when God looked at the ark, he saw sin covered. And inside
that ark, to the people and all that was in there, in the ark,
the animals, there was no wrath. There was only God's kindness.
There was only God's peace. And Noah preached. He had an announcement to make
to the people. We don't know how long he was
a preacher, but it sounds like it could have been for over 100
years, possibly 120 years, depending on how you read the Bible. But
he had a message from the king. He had a message from the creator
that God's punishment was coming upon the old world. The flood
was coming, and it was going to sweep them all away. And there
was this big ark that he was building. And there was the message
that they could come into the ark. And that was preached for
years. And then the day came that the
ark was finished, the door was opened, and the animals came
in from all over the different places of the world. And they
went into that ark. At that time, no doubt, the sun
was shining brightly. There was no hint of a storm
brewing in the sky. No hint of clouds. And then Noah
goes into the ark. And he goes out of that bright
sunlit light. He goes out of that bright sunlit
world. And he goes into a dark ark.
He goes into that coffin-shaped box. And what he's doing, He's
leaving. He's willing to leave that old
world. He's living to die to everything
that that old world had. All the people he'd met, all
the people he'd worked with, all of them were going to be
left behind. He'd have been thinking to himself,
perhaps, I'll never see that old world again. I'll never see
those people again. But as he went into that arc,
that coffin-shaped arc, he entrusted his life into God's hands, that
God would keep them safe, that God would shut them in, that
God would seal the doors. They entrusted their lives, their
future for the new world that he had promised into his hands
too. He entrusted their future, he
entrusted the rest of their lives, the new world into the hands
of that same Lord God Almighty. And the door was shut. And that
very day, that very moment perhaps, we don't know how long it was,
but it was definitely that very same day, The blue sky changed
and the clouds came. The storm gathered and God's
wrath was unleashed and the old world was swept away. We've seen
tragic pictures this week. might have been last week, actually,
of a river that flooded and swept everything in its path away.
And it's a terrible thing to see. When you see, there was
a time-lapse photography that I saw, and literally within about
15 seconds, the river went from a little trickle to a thundering
torrent of about eight meters tall, with everything being cut,
pulled along in its wake. We've seen tsunami pictures where
the floods come in and just sweep everything away in front of them
and there's nothing that you can do, literally nothing that
you can do to stand up against them. And so it was on the time
of the flood and far, far, far, far worse than anything that
we can ever begin to imagine. And the old world was gone. And today's world, people are
willingly ignorant that was an old world. And there's an our
world and there was a bridge with Noah and his ark that bridged
the gap between the two. People are willfully ignorant
of it. I was on a farm on Friday, and the farmer was telling me
how he'd sunk a borehole to get water out for his pigs. And he
was telling me how he drilled about 10 meters down into the
soil, and there were all shells that were coming up. As he was
digging the hole, the shells came up. And because he was making
a hole, so what was in there has to come up. And there was
all these shells, and I was thinking to myself, Yes, there's been
a global flood. You can see that there's shells
and evidence that there's been a flood all over the world. And
Noah survived that flood and came out into our world. And
yet our world today, the world that Jesus lived in, is a world
that still rejects God. And that's why we see around
us the troubles and the problems in the world all around. And
our world itself, our lives will end up in death. And our world
itself will end up being destroyed, not by water this time, but by
fire, by fervent heat. And so we see that these things
are in God's control. The atoms that we know are made
up of tremendous energy. That's why a nuclear bomb has
so much energy to dissipate from just breaking down a small part
of a uranium atom into a smaller uranium atom or a lighter uranium
atom. And atoms are made up of energy
and if they are at this moment in time they're all held by God's
word. God says stay as you are, stay
as you are, stay as you are every second. He's telling all of the
however many atoms and there are in the whole universe stay
as you are and one day by his word they will be told to dissolve
into fervent heat and that's our world in God's hands. But just like in Noah's world
there was a bridge between the old world and our world, so too
there is a bridge between our world and another world, the
kingdom of heaven. And Jesus says here, my kingdom
is not of this world. There is a kingdom that Jesus
is talking about that's really important to every single one
of us. Jesus comes with a message about
this kingdom of heaven. You can read about his text that
he often preached from. It's written down for us in one
place in Mark chapter 1 and verse 15. The time is fulfilled and
the kingdom of God is at hand. repent ye and believe the gospel. That was the text that the Lord
Jesus so often preached from. He was a preacher of righteousness
just like Noah was beforehand and in all his teachings you
see he tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand. There is a
kingdom of God that is soon going to come into existence for each
and every one of us and it's going to happen soon. The future
for the world is a world that is going to be destroyed by fire. The future for each one of us
is that we will not be here for ever. The future for each one
of us, by nature, without God is death, is destruction, and
is destruction by hellfire forever. But the Lord Jesus says here,
repent ye and believe the gospel. The kingdom of God is at hand,
repent ye and believe the gospel. Acknowledge, Jesus is telling
us. Acknowledge that we've disobeyed. Acknowledge that we deserve that
destruction. But understand says Jesus, that
Jesus is making. When he was here talking to Pilate,
he says, to this end I was born and from this cause came I into
the world that I should bear witness unto the truth, the truth
that the Lord Jesus Christ has made a way through the very worst
of deaths. Jesus Christ was sealed in a
tomb. The Lord Jesus rose from death
to life inside the tomb, broke out of the tomb, the stone was
rolled to one side so that Jesus could emerge alive. He broke
out later on out of this world by lifting up from this world
into heaven itself, to leave this world, to go and ascend
to glory. The Lord Jesus Christ, you see,
went to the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus, you see, is like Noah's
Ark was, the bridge between the old world before the flood and
our world today, so there is a bridge today between our world
and the kingdom of heaven. And that is the Lord Jesus Christ. As Noah by grace went into the
ark and said goodbye to all the old world forever, so too we
must come to the Lord Jesus Christ, must in our hearts realise that
we must leave this world here below, that we must enter into
Jesus Christ. And the ark, as I said at the
beginning, was a coffin-type shape. And so too must you and
I die to this world. We must confess we know it's
not our eternal future. We must confess it's not going
to be here forever. We must accept that we must leave
this world. But as we think about it, think
of grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. By grace, you see,
we enter into the loving arms of the Lord Jesus Christ. Noah
entered into an ark. We don't enter into an ark. We
enter into the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ to care for us. Jesus has a kingdom. Jesus is
the king of heaven and Jesus is able to gather us up here
upon earth and bring us from where we are into his eternal
kingdom. Just like Noah. was brought to
the other side of the flood, so we are able to be brought
by the Lord Jesus, safe in his arms, to the kingdom of heaven. And for Noah, whilst he was in
that ark, there was a storm raging all around. The worst storm the
world has ever known. And you and I, we are existing
today in the world that we are living. But you see, this troubled world,
trouble all around, but our hope is to daily go back to the Lord
Jesus. Daily, in everyday prayer, pray
to our Heavenly Father that he would care for us. Jesus taught
us to pray. We can see where it says, our
father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,
thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. This is a daily
prayer that you and I are able to pray to our father as we travel
through this world with the storm of life, the difficulties of
life raging all around, it's a massive privilege to be able
to go to our Heavenly Father in our daily prayer and ask that
His will in your life and mine may be done in time and in eternity,
that His will would be done in our lives. that we may know where it says,
give us this day our daily bread, that you and I can go to our
Heavenly Father in this sin-troubled world, that he would give us
everything that we have need of to live on in this world. Our Heavenly Father, who cares
for us in the kingdom of heaven, is able here to give us this
day our daily bread. Our Heavenly Father is able to
forgive us our debts, is able to forgive us our sins. You and
I, you see, with all of our sin, with all of our troubles, with
all of the mistakes that we make, every day we are able to go to
the Lord Jesus, our Heavenly Father, and confess our sins. And he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity. We need
keeping from entering into more sin. We need, as it says here,
we need to be kept from temptation and delivered from evil. There
is evil in everything that is around us and it would overwhelm
me and it would overwhelm each one of us. Evil can also be another
name for trouble. We can, there is curses, there
are deaths, there is hells, and all of them we need to be delivered
from. And we can't deliver ourselves, lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. May we, as it says here, for
thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
May we be believers that it is his kingdom and his power and
his glory that will deliver us, each one of us, as we travel
through life's journey. that we have no power to deliver
ourselves. It's a wonderful thing, you know,
to come to the Lord Jesus at his feet and to confess your
total inability to solve your own problems, that there are
things that are way beyond you, but to come to the loving hands
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that where we cannot do, he can do
for us, for his is the kingdom, the power and the glory. And here is this wonderful thing
that we are able to experience these things forever. Well, you see, as we travel through
life's journey, what a wonderful thing it is that there is a kingdom,
the kingdom of heaven, that at the end of this world, the prospects
of this world, there is a kingdom of immense blessing. This world
is a troubled world. The kingdom of heaven, there
is no death, there are no tears, there are no sorrows, there are
no cryings. There is not even a night. There
is not a sun. But the Lord Jesus is there to
supply our every need for all eternity. Well, may we daily
come into the tender loving care of the Lord Jesus's arms. Noah
had to be sealed or shut into that ark. Well Jesus has a seal
to seal us into his loving care and his seal is his promise.
He has promised, he gives us the seal, his promise that I
will never leave you and I will never forsake you. We can be
in his arms and he will not fail us. There may be all kinds of
temptation to say he will let you down, but he says, no, I
will never let you down. And as we travel through life's
journey, as we read God's word, we see that he never did let
anyone down. And as we know about history,
he hasn't let anyone down since. and he won't let us down in our
day either. We walk by faith, believing he
who has delivered, will deliver, and, or is delivering, and will
yet deliver. Past, present, and future. My kingdom, says Jesus, is not
of this world. He's not a king in this world,
but he absolutely is a king of kings and lord of lords in heaven
above. And may we enter into the Lord
Jesus Christ as Noah entered into that ark all those years
ago. And it says in 1 Peter, it tells
us about how Noah was saved by water and that
that is like a type of how Noah was saved out of the flood. The eight people were saved with
Noah in the ark and it says here, the like figure where unto even
baptism does also now save us, not the putting away of the filth
of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards
God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Noah had to go into a
coffin-like structure to be totally safe from what he was saved in
that position where everyone outside of that position was
swept to a destruction. When we trust in the tender loving
care of the Lord Jesus Christ we are called to go down into
the waters of baptism. We are called to be baptised
and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. We are going down into a grave-like
structure, to go down underneath the water. But we believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ that he will raise us up. We believe
we are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, and he will raise us up out of that water. And we
believe that the Lord Jesus, when we are safe in his loving,
tender care, whether we live, whether we die, whatever happens,
we are safe in his eternal care. His resurrection will raise us
from this world into his kingdom, so that we will be part of that
kingdom which is not of this world, not from here, but the
kingdom of heaven. And so, We go down as believers
in the Lord Jesus into those waters of baptism, resting on
the Lord Jesus Christ that he will raise us up. And when we
walk by faith, when we go down by faith into the tender loving
care of the Lord Jesus Christ, for him to save us by faith,
we will be accounted righteous. faith is accounted righteousness
to us we are justified by faith and when we are justified then
we will have as it says here in first of peter it's actually
chapter three first of peter in chapter three we will have
the answer of a good conscience. Why will we have the answer of
a good conscience? Because our sins, which are many,
are forgiven and they are cast away into the depths of the sea
and can be found no more. As far as the east is from the
west, they are gone. And so the bad conscience that
we had because of our sins is done away with to give us a good
conscience that we are given by the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ who cleanses us from all sin. And so we must enter into
the Lord Jesus in the same way as Noah entered into that ark
to be transported from being part of this kingdom of this
world to being recruited into the kingdom of heaven. And that's what Jesus tells us
in Mark's gospel there where he says, The time is fulfilled. Basically it means now. This
is the gospel age. This is the age in which God
is recruiting his people to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of
heaven. It's at hand. It's happening
now. And the message then is repent
ye and believe the gospel. It's being built here out of
the souls. The Kingdom of God is being built
here out of the souls of men and women and boys and girls. Men and women who believe the
Gospel and realise that this world isn't forever, that my
life here isn't forever. that however much we try to modernize
modern life, we cannot make it perfect, we cannot get rid of
the curse, we cannot get rid of the problems, we cannot get
rid of the thorns in the side. No sooner has one gone, another
comes along. We've had Putin at this moment
in time and various others that cause problems, if they weren't
here, there'd be something else. Because this world is a sin-cursed
world. But what the Lord Jesus shows
us is that just like the old world was going to go and this
world was going to come, so this world is going to go and another
world is going to come. and how do we get from one to
the other by, as it says here, repenting and understanding that
we're not going to be here forever and believing. that the Lord
Jesus and his gospel is the way through these things, that Jesus
tells each and every one of us in love and kindness, the Bible
is written to every single one of us, every single one of you,
and it's written and it's God's personal message to you, whether
you listen or whether you don't, but it's written there, come
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden. and I will give
you rest. This is the message you see of
the gospel. To a troubled world there is
rest in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of heaven. The Lord
Jesus says how is it to be? How do we get from one to the
other? Through the Lord Jesus Christ. And he tells us also,
ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock,
and it shall be opened unto you. There is a kingdom. It has a
door. And we are called here by Jesus
to knock on that door, that he may open that door to us by grace. We are called to ask for his
blessing, that we may receive. his blessing. We are to seek
his blessing, that we may find his blessing. Where do we do
this? At the feet of the Lord Jesus.
Broken, lost, hell deserving, ruined. We come with total impossibilities
on our side. we come to the feet of the Lord
Jesus Christ and beg God be merciful to me a sinner and may it be
the prayer of each and every one of us just like it was of
that dying thief that your prayer and my prayer, the dying thief
was no, well I was going to say angel, well he wasn't an angel
at all, he wasn't even a good man, he was a terrible man. Yet
he came to the Lord Jesus and asked the Lord Jesus to remember
him. He came to the Lord Jesus confessing
that he was dying but he deserved to die. He came to the Lord Jesus
begging that Jesus would remember him in his kingdom. He was a
believer that Jesus had the keys to get into heaven. He was a
believer that Jesus was the way to be transported from that life
that he was there in at that time on the cross and in a few
hours time the life that he needed in eternity in the kingdom of
God. Jesus was the bridge Jesus is
the same yesterday like he was then and today and forevermore. My prayer for each one of us
here is here that Jesus would remember each one of you, each
one of us and bring us his way into his kingdom. And the Lord's
prayer ends up with an Amen, which is, Lord, may it be so. And that's how it is from our
side. But from the Lord Jesus' side, from God the Father's side,
when he says Amen, it is, it shall be so. Well, may it be
so in each of our lives that we know that Jesus' kingdom is
not of this world. got this vast kingdom of blessing
and he's calling us to him to be found in his arms to bring
us into that kingdom. May we each know these blessings,
let's pray. Dear Lord God, we thank thee
so much for thy precious word, and we pray, Lord Jesus, that
thou would enlighten each of our hearts, Lord, that we each
may know that this is a sin-troubled, sin-cursed world that hasn't
got a future for eternity for any of us. But Lord Jesus, thou
hast a future, thou hast an eternity, thou hast an eternity of blessing.
And Lord, may each one of us come unto thee at a time when
thou mayest be found, Sit at thy feet, Lord Jesus. Beg of
thee, Lord Jesus, that thou would take us up into thy arms, that
each and every one of us may be found safe in the arms of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now and always we ask for Jesus
Christ's sake. Amen.