this morning. Before we begin,
let's bow before our Lord in prayer and seek his blessing. Our Father, which art in heaven,
holy and reverent is your precious matchless name. Father, we've
gathered here together this morning in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and we dare only come into your presence pleading His
obedience is our only righteousness, pleading His blood as a cleansing
and redemption for our sin. And Father, I pray this morning
that you would enable us to exalt the name of Christ the Savior,
that everything that is said and done here this morning would
be done to the praise and the glory of His name, that we would
be caused to look away from ourselves and look to Christ and to trust
Him. to find our rest and hope and
peace and confidence in him. Father, I pray you'd bless us
in this hour as we look into your word. Don't let us just
go through the motions of religion, but Father, I pray that you'd
be our teacher. Speak to our hearts through your word this
morning. And what we pray for ourselves, we pray for our children's
classes that Father, you'd bless in a mighty and special way. how we thank you for these little
ones that you've given to us. And Father, I pray that you would
use this time to teach them the scriptures, that you might use
this time to, as you did with Timothy of old, teach them the
scriptures that makes them wise into salvation. Father, we ask
you to forgive us of our many sins and failures, and ask that
you would always and only see us in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Of course, in his precious name, for his sake we pray, amen. Now, I've titled the lesson this
morning, The Gospel of the Kingdom, and you see where I got that
title from, from our text in Mark 1, beginning in verse 14.
Now, after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, the time
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye
and believe the gospel. Now the Savior came to town preaching.
He's preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. And the gospel
of the kingdom is the gospel. It's the one and only gospel.
The gospel of the kingdom of God is the gospel of our salvation. It's the same gospel we preach
today. You think about that 2,000 years ago, Our Savior walked
into town preaching the very same gospel that we preach today.
It's the gospel of the kingdom. Turn over just for a second to
Matthew chapter three. I find this very interesting.
This gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, it can't be silenced. John the Baptist preached the
very same gospel and then he went to prison and our Lord began
preaching that very same gospel, the gospel of the kingdom. Mark
three, verse one. In those days came John the Baptist
preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent ye,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That's the very same
thing that the Savior said when he began preaching. Now, those
religious leaders of that day, they didn't like John's preaching.
They didn't like his message, did they? They threw John in
prison for preaching that gospel, and eventually they put him to
death. And I'm just sure they thought this. We're done with
that message now. This guy's been preaching it.
We put him to death. We're done with that message now. And then
the Lord came preaching the very same message, the gospel of the
kingdom. Well, they put him to death.
They thought, I'm sure we're done with this message now. And
then the apostles picked up and preached that very same message.
They preached the gospel of the kingdom and they went all over
the world preaching it. Well, They put the apostles,
they put the apostles to death. And they persecuted everybody
that believed it and ran them all out of town and thought we
finally run this message out of town, we're done with this
message. And when they thought they were rid of that gospel,
all they did is spread the message into the whole world. Everywhere
those believers went, they went preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
Now that's God's gospel and it cannot be silenced. And aren't
we thankful? We're the beneficiaries of that
today. Now, I wanna give you three points that I think is
helpful in understanding the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel
of the kingdom of God. John or Mark doesn't really give
us any details of what the Lord preached, but I'm sure of these
three things. Number one, the subject of the
gospel of the kingdom is the king. Now, if there's kingdom,
there's gotta be a king, doesn't there? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ
is king. He's king by birth. He's the
son of God. He's king by birth. The father
made him king. The father gave him the throne
and said, sit here on this throne till I put all your enemies under
your feet. The father's given everything
into the hand of the son. He's king. Now you can't overemphasize
that too much. The Lord Jesus Christ is king. He's king of kings. He's lord
over all lords. He's king, he's in control over
everything and every event in his creation. He's king. Now this sovereign, powerful,
mighty, glorious king did not stay in his ivory tower and live
a life of ease and comfort. Instead, the king came all the
way down where his sinful people are so that he could save them
from their sins. The king came to serve his people,
not to have them serve him. He came to serve his people by
saving them from their sin. Now I'm telling you, you find
me another king like that. You find me a king who rules
in unquestioned authority, who comes to serve his people. Find
me another king like that. That's the king we preach. Now
Christ, he's the king. but he's also everything else
in his kingdom. He's everything in the kingdom. He's everything
in the gospel. He's the prophet, he's the priest,
and he's the king. Christ the king came as the prophet,
the preacher. He came to save his people from
their sins. He came to do the work of redemption. And he also came as the preacher
to tell everybody what he's done for his people. And he's also
the priest that offers a sacrifice that puts away the sin of his
people. He's everything in the kingdom. He's everything in the
gospel. Now the king, this is the king. You think now this is the king,
he came preaching. The gospel of the kingdom of God is a commandment
to sinners. Now it's good news. You'll never
hear better news anywhere than the gospel of the kingdom. But
don't ever be mistaken about this. It's a commandment. It's
a commandment to sinners. See, it's the king. The king
of kings doing the preaching here. And kings give commandments. They don't give invitations.
They give commandments. Kings don't ask people to do
things. Kings command people. Listen to what Solomon said,
Ecclesiastes eight, verse four. Where the word of a king is,
there's power. and it's unquestioned power.
Solomon said, and who may say unto him, what doest thou? For
the word of the king is, there's power. This is a commandment.
The commandment of the gospel of the kingdom is to repent,
is to quit, quit trusting your works of righteousness and turn
away from those things because you've turned to Christ to trust
him. That's a commandment. The commandment of the gospel
is believe. Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
not just a good idea, that's a commandment. Believe, right
now, right where you sit, believe on the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now I'll get to more of that in a minute, but that's
the commandment of the gospel, the gospel of the kingdom. Now
I understand this, the gospel commands dead sinners to do something
that we cannot do. I understand that, by nature,
We cannot believe on the name of Christ. We can't make ourselves
do it. And you know why? Dead sinners of a dead nature,
they can't believe. They can't do anything spiritual.
A dead nature doesn't have the ability to believe. A dead nature
doesn't have the ability to do anything that will please the
king. But remember what Solomon said,
where the word of the king is, there's power. There's power.
Now it's not our power, it's his power. The message of the
kingdom is the message of Christ, the sovereign savior. He has
the power to save. He has the power to give faith. He has the power to reveal himself
and make his people turn to him. He has the crown rights to do
what he will with every son of Adam. Every son of Adam is in
his hands. He turns them and does with them
as he pleases. He has the right to damn. He
has the right to pronounce a just judgment, and he has the right
to save. He has the right to save, and
he has the power to save. Now that's the very definition
of sovereign mercy, sovereign grace. Where the word of the
king is, there's power. There's power to save. whom he
will. There's power to show mercy on
whom he will show mercy and sovereign, sovereign grace, sovereign mercy
from the king. That's the only hope a dead sinner
has. He's got to come in power and
give life, doesn't he? Give faith, draw us to Christ. Now, Christ is king. Oh, I wish. I wish people could get that
through their head. Christ is king. He does what he pleases. Well, here's the good news of
the gospel of the kingdom. Christ, the sovereign king, unquestioned
power everywhere. He can damn and he can save.
He delights to show mercy to sinners. That's the character
of the king. So there's a kingdom, there's
got to be a king. He's all in this kingdom. All
right, number two. What kind of kingdom is the kingdom
of God? We'll look at John chapter 18.
God's kingdom is not an earthly kingdom, it's a spiritual kingdom. John 18 verse 33. Then Pilate entered into the
judgment hall again and called Jesus and said unto him, art
thou the king of the Jews? Now, Pilate, he's a politician. He's interested in earthly rule,
earthly power, earthly kingship. He's a puppet of Rome. This is
an important business to him. Are you the king of the Jews,
or are you gonna compete with the Roman rule? And Jesus answered
him, sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it
thee of me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew?
Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto
me. What hast thou done? And Jesus answered, my kingdom
is not of this world. Now there's no question, I'm
the king and I have a kingdom, but it's not of this world. If
my kingdom were of this world, then when my servants fight,
thy should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom
not from hence. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. Now the gospel. The gospel of
God, the gospel of the kingdom does not declare physical, material
blessings of this life. That's not the point. The eternal
gospel of God does not tell folks how to get more out of this world. It doesn't. It doesn't tell us
how to get more stuff out of this world. God's going to burn it
up soon anyway. That just wouldn't make sense,
would it? That the gospel is about getting more stuff in this
world. Anyone preaching a health and wealth and happiness message,
happiness and stuff in this life, I'm telling you, they're not
telling the truth. They're not telling the truth. I see titles of shows on religious
cable channels. I've never tuned into them. You
know, a lot of times I do. It's like a car wreck, right?
You got a rubber neck. You got to look at this. There's
some stuff, I mean, that's just so bad, I just wouldn't even
turn it on, but I've seen these titles. God wants you to be happy. God wants you to be healthy.
God wants you to be wealthy. Well, the first problem with
that is this, God doesn't want anything, does he? God doesn't
want. God does as he wills. God does
as he pleases. You and I will do as he pleases,
I can promise you that. If God wills for you to be wealthy,
you will be, or healthy, or happy, if God wills it, you will be.
But you know, maybe God's willed you to be healthy and happy,
and maybe not, maybe not. I know this, it's God's will
that his people sorrow at some point, I know that. It may be
God's will for us to be sick. It seldom is God's will that
his people be wealthy. You know, if God wants you to
be wealthy, he wants all his people to be wealthy and happy. The Lord sure failed the early
church, didn't he? They were all, Paul said, in
deep poverty, deep want. They were homeless and run out
of their homes and lost their jobs. I mean, the Lord failed
those people if he wanted them to be happy and wealthy, didn't
he? Now, let me say this, because
you know this is true. Our God can and he does give
blessings of this life to his people. And everybody in this
room has to say, oh, God's been so good to me. He has blessed
me so much. Oh, it's just you can't even
you can't even fathom his blessings. I'm just talking about just physically,
just naturally in this life. The Lord taught us to pray. Lord,
give us this day our daily bread. Now we look to him to supply
everything that we need. And everything that we have comes
from his hand. But the point of the gospel is
not the blessings of this life. The point of the gospel is spiritual
blessings. The point of the gospel is spiritual,
eternal life. Not this temporary life, it's
eternal life. The point of the gospel is not
so that you'll have lots of friends in this life. The point of the
gospel is a spiritual relationship with God. Now, that's the point. Now, a spiritual relationship
with God will give you brothers and sisters in this life, but
it also will give you lots of enemies, too. The point's not
that you have friends and all these, you know, I see that in
false religion. Everybody likes everybody. Everybody
loves everybody. And you know why? Nobody's preaching
anything. Nobody's preaching anything that runs contrary to
this flesh. The point is a relationship with God. That's the point of
the gospel. Second, the kingdom of God is
a kingdom of righteousness. Let me show you that Romans chapter
14. Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. For the kingdom of God is not
meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Ghost. For he that in these things serveth
Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men. Now the gospel
of the kingdom is a kingdom of righteousness. This gospel declares
you and I are unrighteous. We're sinners, and that's all
we ever will be, sinners. We can't obey the law. We can't
do anything to make ourselves righteous. Now, if you got enough
willpower, you got enough motivation, you can change some outward habits,
but you can't give yourself a righteous nature. Can't be done. We need
somebody else to do that for us, don't we? Well, the message
of the gospel is how Christ the King makes his people righteous.
is by taking their sin away from them and putting it away by his
precious blood. He makes his people righteous.
He makes his people holy. He causes a new holy nature to
be born in his people. He makes them holy. The message
of the gospel is a new nature that's born of the seed of the
king. That's how he makes his people
righteous. And then the kingdom of God is
a kingdom of peace. That's what Paul says, a kingdom
of righteousness, and peace, peace. Now you remember when
Abraham was returning from the slaughter of the kings. Remember
he went and rescued Lot and all those inhabitants of Sodom that
had been taken captive by those evil kings. And Abraham went
and whipped them all. And as he was returning, Abraham,
scripture says, met a man named Melchizedek. Melchizedek is described
as the king of righteousness, the king of Salem, which is the
king of peace. Now I'm sure, I'm just so sure
of this, Melchizedek is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. Christ
the king. Melchizedek is the king of righteousness. Well who do you know has a righteous
kingdom? Christ the king, his kingdom, we just read the kingdom
of righteousness. Melchizedek is also called the
king of peace. Well that's Christ too, isn't
it? The king of peace. In the gospel of the kingdom,
tells us how Christ has made peace for his people. Now, this peace must be made
because you and I were all in Adam when Adam sinned. When Adam
declared war on God, you and I declared war on him too. Now,
God didn't start the war. God didn't start the animosity.
Man did that. Well, something's got to be done
to make peace. There's a divide between these
two that cannot be crossed by the natural man. Somebody's got
to make peace. So Christ the King, he came and
he made peace for his people by the blood of his cross. The
blood of Christ took away the sin that made God angry. So God's
at peace. The blood of Christ took away
all of the sin of all of his people. There's no reason for
God to be angry anymore. There's no reason for God's justice
to hunt down anyone for whom Christ died because the blood
of Christ took away their sin. God's at peace. There's nothing for God to be
angry about because of what Christ the King did. All right, God's
at peace. God's reconciled. But what about
us? We're still at war, aren't we?
We still have a nature that's enmity against God. So God, the
Holy Spirit comes. And he takes that blood of Christ,
the blood of Christ that made the father to be not angry. He
takes the blood of Christ and applies it to our hearts. That's
the new birth. When the Holy Spirit applies
the blood of Christ to our hearts, it's a new birth. We're given
a new heart. And that new heart, that new nature is at peace with
God. No one, I mean, absolutely no
one who has been born again is at war with God. Nobody who's
been born again is saying the way God saves sinners is not
right or unfair. Nobody. If we've been born again,
we've surrendered. You know when there's peace in
a war? When somebody surrenders, there'll be peace. If somebody
surrenders, God's people have surrendered. We've submitted
ourselves to the righteousness of Christ. And there's peace. There's peace. There's peace
with God. And there's peace in the heart.
You know why a believer has peace in the heart? We're not trying to earn a righteousness
that we can't earn. If you're trying to do something
that you can't do, There's just the opposite of peace in your
heart and in your mind, just an angst. More than anything in this world,
I hate trying to do something I can't do. That's not peaceful. But if Christ is your righteousness,
if Christ obeyed the law for you, if your acceptance with
the Father is Christ, you have peace, don't you? Because you're
accepted. And with two people, Both have
peace with God. They both have peace in their
hearts because of what Christ has done for them. Those two
people should have peace with each other. They sure should. Now I know we can't have peace
with the world. I mean, how can somebody that
loves Christ have peace with somebody that hates him? I'm
not talking here now about the world. I'm talking about people
that claim to be believers. There's a problem when those
people are not at peace. There's a real problem. Scripture
tells us, commands us, to seek peace and pursue it. If you're
still there, Romans 14, look at verse 19. Let us, therefore,
follow after things which make for peace, and things wherewith
one may edify another. Don't look for ways to pick at
each other and tear each other down. Look for ways to edify
one another. Look for ways to have peace.
It's a serious problem in our day that people misuse the gospel
of the kingdom. And they use it as a tool to
fuss. They use it as a tool to fight
with other believers. I'm not talking about the world.
I'm talking about they use the gospel of peace as a tool, as
a weapon of war to fuss and fight with other believers and try
to separate themselves from other believers. Now, I'll tell you
this. We don't have to agree on every
little point. Now, we're going to agree on
the blood. We're gonna agree on redemption. We're gonna agree
on Christ. We're gonna agree on the, but
every little point, like I told you earlier, I'm so sure that
Melchizedek is a pre-incarnated appearance of Christ. I used
to have a very, very, very dear friend who was adamant I'm wrong,
but we're still friends. We still have peace. We don't
have to agree on every little thing. We're gonna agree on the
blood. We're gonna agree on Christ. We're gonna agree on redemption.
We're gonna agree on those things. but we're gonna have peace because
the gospel is the kingdom of peace, of peace. And be wary
of that, be wary of, because it's such a thing in society
today to, I mean, people look for reasons to divide. And boy, you would just disagree
on one little thing, you know, we're enemies for the rest of
our lives, you know. Be careful not to do that in
God's church. Let's remember this. Our gospel is the gospel
of peace. God's people are citizens of
a kingdom of peace. We should be peaceable people.
Well, that brings me to the third thing. How does a person become
a citizen of the kingdom? I like what I hear about the
king, don't you? I like to be under his rule. I like what I
hear about this kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness, a kingdom of
peace. I want to know about that. I want to be a citizen of that
kingdom. Well, how does a person become a citizen of that kingdom?
Well, the Lord tells us plainly. Look back at our text. Mark 1
verse 15. The Lord makes it so plain. His preaching is not hard to
understand. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom
of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel. Here's how a person becomes a
citizen of this. Repent and believe. Repent and believe. Now the Lord
says the kingdom of God is at hand. The king is here. The kingdom's here. Today, today,
right now is the day of salvation. I tell you, the kingdom's here.
Come to Christ today. Come beg him for mercy and forgiveness
and do it right now. Right now where you sit. Christ
is here. The kingdom of the gospel is
being preached today. Now you believe him. You come
to him and believe him. The way a sinner becomes a citizen
of the kingdom is by repenting, believing the gospel, believing,
bowing to the subject of the gospel, Christ the King. Now
repentance. Repentance is not just being
sorry. Not being sorry for our sins. There's some sorrow involved
in that. I wish I didn't sin. I wish I didn't trust in those
idolatrous things that I used to trust in. I wish I never did
trust in my own works. But there's some sorrow that
I ever did that, and that my flesh still wants to. But repentance
is a whole lot more than sorrow. Repentance is a turning. Repentance
is turning to Christ. We turn away from trusting in
our religious works and we trust Christ alone because we've turned
to him. That's how you become a citizen of the kingdom. It's
turning to Christ and trusting him. And believing on Christ,
it's simply believing that Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the King,
he is all it takes to save me. That's faith. It's just believing
he's all it takes to save me. I don't have to do anything to
add to it. I don't have to do anything to make it effectual
for me. Christ is all it takes to save me. Now, faith in Christ,
believing Him, trusting Him, that takes all the pressure off,
doesn't it? I don't have to be good enough for God to save me,
which is a good thing, because I can't be good enough for God
to save me. See, that takes the pressure off. I just go back
to what I said a minute ago. If I'm trying to do something
that I can't do, that's pressure. Now, if I'm trying to do something
I'm an expert at, there's no pressure. If I trust Christ,
there's no pressure. He's already made me perfect
in Him. Salvation comes from quitting trusting in all of my
religious works and trusting Christ. That's how a person becomes
a citizen of this kingdom. Now, I know full well that we
can't make ourselves repeal. I know by experience, we cannot. I don't care how hard you try,
you cannot make yourself turn to Christ and trust him. You
can't make yourself believe on it. I know that by experience. Only the king can make us turn
to him. I tell you, you come to Christ,
but only the king can draw you. See, he's got the power. The
word of the king is there's power. He's got the power to draw you
to Christ. I tell you, that's God's commandment, but I can't
make you do it and you can't make yourself do it. Only the
king can do that for us. He has got to give us faith.
He's got to draw us to him. We cannot do that for ourselves. But you know what we can do?
We can beg him to save us. We can be like blind Bartimaeus
and just keep crying out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy
on me. We can beg him, can't we? We can beg him. You know
what's the truth? Everyone, without exception,
who's ever begged for mercy has been made a citizen of this kingdom. Our problem, is we're not sinful enough. We
don't know how sinful we are. Our problem is we think we can
still help ourselves in some way. We're not helpless enough.
If the Lord ever makes us helpless, you know what we'll do? We'll
beg him for mercy. And when we do, he'll put us
in his kingdom. That's Christ, that's what he
does. That's our gospel, the gospel of the kingdom. All right,
well, hope the Lord bless that to you.