Matt Chandler - The Way of Jesus

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those; we’re going to be in Matthew chapter 13. I have been a Christian now for 23 or 24 years, and upon my conversion, it was wildly popular at that point in Christian history for Christians to wear one of two different bracelets, or maybe both if you really loved the Lord. The first bracelet had a series of beads meant to help you share the gospel with people. So, people would ask, «Hey, what’s up with your bracelet?» and you could explain, «This black bead here stands for your sin, which separates you from the Lord. But the good news is, see this next bead? It’s red, and it represents the blood of Jesus. Look at the next bead, which is white because your sins have been changed from red to white, and now you are clean before God.» Because we were Baptists, we had the blue bead—not everybody had the blue bead, but the Church of Christ kids did and the Baptists did. We had the blue bead for baptism, and then the last bead was gold, representing the streets of gold in heaven. It may seem kitschy in 2018, but I liked our old way of doing things better than some more modern approaches; it was just a unique way to share the gospel. If you didn’t have that bracelet, maybe you had one that simply said WWJD, which stood for «What Would Jesus Do?» I mean, how easy is that question to answer? Would He spit in mud and wipe it on somebody’s eyes to heal them from blindness, or would He flip over a table at church and kick everybody out? Would He curse a fig tree and make it shrivel? I mean, that’s not an easy question to answer. But the heart of it is, we want to be people that look like Jesus, walk like Jesus, and consider Jesus in all we do. So, WWJD? This is week three of our series «Citizens and Strangers» on the Kingdom of God. I don’t have time to go back over all that we’ve covered, but what I want to point out today is what Jesus thought of the Kingdom of God. Did Jesus come preaching something different, or did He come not only to fulfill but to expand on the people of God’s understanding of the Kingdom? So far, we’ve looked at the Kingdom and the Kingdom born and the Kingdom fallen. That was week one, and I thought JT did a masterful job last week of tying together the covenants and how that is all a part of the Kingdom through the one sentence in Matthew’s genealogy: «Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.» In fact, one of my hopes in this series is for you to see and understand all the more the beauty of the unity of the Bible—that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are not encapsulated stories unto themselves but actually chapters in a larger story. By seeing that larger story, I believe we become emboldened to be the kind of people that God has called us to be. I want us to look at and marvel at Jesus and the way of Jesus concerning the Kingdom in our time together. If you’re still a little bit confused about what we’re discussing when we talk about the Kingdom, here’s what we mean: three Ds. The first thing we’re talking about is Dwelling. What we mean when we talk about dwelling is that you and I have been designed to be in the presence of God. In fact, the entire Bible can be summed up in three words: God with us. When you look at Eden in Genesis 1 and 2, you see God with us. When you see the people of God led out of slavery in the Exodus and the tabernacle set up, you have the presence of God among His people. In the coming of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, it is said that Jesus came and dwelt or tabernacled with humankind—God’s presence with us. When we see the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, you have the indwelling power of God with His people. When we look at the end of the Bible, in Revelation, with new heavens and new earth, God is with His people. The Kingdom of God is about the presence of God among the people of God; that’s what we’re talking about. We’re also discussing Dominion. Here’s what I mean by Dominion: look right at me. You have not been saved by grace through faith for navel-gazing morality. Listen to me: you have not been saved by grace through faith for navel-gazing morality. You have, like Adam and Eve in the garden and like the disciples at the Mount of Ascension, been given the task of the Kingdom. Adam and Eve were told to take the order of Eden, take the light of Eden, and bring order and light to chaos and darkness. Then Jesus, at His ascension, says to the disciples, «Go into all the nations and make disciples.» Step into chaos and bring order; step into darkness and bring light. It’s no wonder to me that so many Christians are bored with their faith because we’ve turned our faith…