July 15, 2025 • 43 mins
Episode Summary: The Kingdom of God is the story of God’s rule returning to the earth through Christ. It’s about all of life—spiritual, relational, and physical—being restored to the way God originally designed it. And we’re invited to be part of that story.
Through the power of the Spirit, we live as agents of renewal, bringing shalom and reconciliation into every corner of our lives and our world. This is what it means to be the people of the Kingdom. And this is what it looks like for nations to truly flourish.
In this episode, you’ll hear Dwight Vogt’s training from the 2022 DNA Global Forum as he unpacked the Bible’s big story: the Kingdom of God. Explores how the gospel of the Kingdom touches every part of life. He challenges narrow, privatized views of the gospel and invites us to recover a broader, richer understanding of God’s redemptive mission.
Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/
🎙️Featured Guest: Dwight Vogt is the former Vice President at the Disciple Nations Alliance. Prior to his work with the DNA, he spent 27 years with Food for the Hungry, serving in field-based leadership roles in Bangladesh, Peru, Thailand, and Guatemala. Throughout his career, Dwight has been passionate about equipping the global church to live out a biblical worldview and bring holistic transformation to communities and nations.
📌 Recommended Links
👉 Kingdomizer 101 Course from DNA: Truth and Transformation
👉 Video: The Transforming Story
👉 Presentations from DNA’s 2022 Global Forum
💻 Follow Us on Social Media:
📲 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disciplenations
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
📽️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Luke Allen (00:03):
Hi friends, welcome, or welcome back to Ideas have
Consequences.
My name is Luke Allen, I'm theproducer of this podcast and, as
many of you guys know, this isthe podcast of the Disciple
Nations Alliance, which is aglobal discipleship training
ministry that has been able toreach people from over a hundred
nations worldwide over the lastnearly 30 years and, as such,
our real focus here is ondiscipleship training.
(00:24):
So from time to time we like toshare one of those trainings
with you guys here on thepodcast.
So for today's episode, we willbe sharing a talk from the one
and only Dwight Vogt, author,speaker and co-host of this
podcast.
This talk is from our last DNAGlobal Forum three years ago in
Ethiopia.
The theme of that forum wasfoundational principles for
(00:45):
flourishing nations.
This talk is the first sessionfrom that forum and it's on a
topic that I would say isprobably one of Dwight's areas
of expertise and something thatwe can all learn from.
And one last point before we getrolling today, if you are a
regular listener to this podcast, ideas have Consequences, we
are so thankful for your timeand attention and I just wanted
(01:07):
to let you guys know a littlebehind the scenes.
I just actually wrapped upscheduling all of our interviews
and guests for the remainder ofthis summer and fall and, as
such, I'm really excited for theupcoming conversations and
topics that we're going to becovering here on the show.
So I just wanted to give thatas a little bit of a tease for
you guys to stay tuned here onthe podcast.
Ideas have consequences.
(01:27):
And also, I guess, one finallast point before we get started
today.
Dwight would probablyappreciate it if I mentioned
that he did give this talk rightafter an 18 hour flight over to
Ethiopia, and he told me afterthe talk that he was actually
exhausted during it.
However, if he hadn't told methat, I probably wouldn't have
guessed it, because I actuallythought this was one of my
favorite talks that I've everheard him give, and I think that
(01:49):
each one of you guys will agreewith me as well after listening
to it.
So, without further ado, dwightvote.
Dwight Vogt (01:58):
I've been assigned the first principle.
It says this God works inhistory to fulfill his
redemptive purpose, to redeempeople and bless the nations.
He grants us the privilege ofparticipating in carrying out
his purposes in the world.
And then Scott read for us theverse that we often go to for
this principle, which is inGenesis 12, two to three, where
(02:22):
he says to Abram I will make youa great nation and I will bless
you and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who blessyou, and him who dishonors you I
will curse, and in you, all thefamilies of the earth shall be
blessed.
Oftentimes we'll turn next toColossians 1.20, and we're very
familiar with this.
(02:42):
It's a very favorite DNA verse,for God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in him, andwe're very familiar with this.
It's a very favorite DNA verse,for God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in him and,through him, to reconcile to
himself all things, whetherthings on earth or things in
heaven, by making peace throughhis blood shed on the cross.
When you think about God'sblessing to Abraham coming
through his lineage, jesusChrist, we know that Christ came
(03:03):
to reconcile us, and we're veryfamiliar with the idea of him
reconciling us to God.
Colossians 1.20 takes thatamazing truth and expands it and
says yeah, I'm gonna reconcileyou to God, I'm gonna make you
right with the Father in spiteof your sin.
I'm gonna cover that.
But then I'm gonna reconcileall things, heaven and earth.
(03:23):
And then he gives us theministry 2 Corinthians, 5, 17,.
And all this is from God, whohas reconciled us to himself
through Christ and gave us theministry of reconciliation.
That God was reconciling theworld to himself in Christ, not
counting man's sins against him,and he has committed to us the
message of reconciliation.
(03:44):
And he has committed to us themessage of reconciliation, the
work of reconciliation.
So we look at all aspects oflife and we're involved in
proclaiming God's message ofreconciliation for all things.
The fallen world principle isdifferent.
This is probably more ofmaterialism and atheism than
(04:07):
anything else.
But I'll just give some verybrief ideas because I think
throughout the week others willtouch more deeply on each one of
these.
One would be there is no realoverarching purpose in history.
There is no true ortranscendent purpose for human
life.
Most of the people groups wework with this would be the case
(04:27):
, I think of my country.
Materialism and atheism hasreigned there for many years now
and I think sometimes, ifthere's no overarching purpose,
we're just going to survive, eat, drink and be happy and make
the best of the day, make upyour own purpose, at best
control your own destiny.
And the results are twofold.
(04:48):
One is you're either fatalistic, which we have a growing
population in my country offatalistic people.
The streets are full ofhomeless and drug addicted and
actually apathy in our youngergeneration, just the idea of
hopelessness and fatalism.
And the flip side of that isarrogance.
(05:10):
We saw this in COVID.
It's like we can do anything wewant.
We can solve this disease, wecan control you, we can control
life, and science is the answer.
And we know that arrogancereally is coupled with folly.
Arrogance is not wisdom iscoupled with folly.
Arrogance is not wisdom.
I'm not an expert on pantheismor Hinduism or New Age
(05:31):
spiritualism, but I know thatthere's a sense that we're one
with the universe.
That's the main concept interms of the purpose of history.
We're reincarnation, but towhat?
Will we be higher, will we belower?
Will we be a tree?
Will we be a woman, Will we bea man?
And then there's a Christianside of this, which and I wrote
(05:51):
this just as getting in touchwith the universe and your own
goodness.
I recently read UniversalChrist by Richard Rohr.
He's a Catholic priest and he'stalking about how, basically,
god's goodness is in us and it'sour job to find that goodness
and to reveal the Christ in us.
And never one speaks of thecross, never one speaks of the
(06:12):
fall.
It's this idea that we're onewith the universe, we're one
with goodness, we're one withGod.
We just need to go deep withinourselves and we can find truth.
And again, the answer is eitheryou find out, you can't.
There's a sense of fatalism orarrogance.
Yes, I can Last one, animism,folk, traditional religion.
But here we have our fate, ourdestiny, and spirits play the
(06:36):
dominant role in all of natureand life.
The best we can do is live inharmony with the spirit world,
appease the spirits.
There's actually a Christianside of this too.
We were talking about thesacred-secular divide and
there's a sense that in theprosperity gospel, if I can
control God, if I can pray theright way, if I can say the
(06:57):
right words, I can get God to dowhat I want him to do.
And it's almost a form ofanimism.
And again, in animism, unlessyou know you can control things.
It's fatalistic.
And the other opposite would bearrogance.
So what do we do if God'sworking in history to fulfill
(07:18):
his redemptive purpose and wehave the privilege of
participating?
We share Christ's message ofreconciliation with the world
and, by God's grace, weparticipate in that
reconciliation, we express it,we live it out, we demonstrate
it, we experience it.
I refer to this principle asoverarching because I think it's
(07:42):
fundamental really to thereason we're here this week, to
talk about our role in beingministers of reconciliation and
sharing that message.
But I'd like to take us up alittle higher than that.
My wife and I had the privilegeof teaching foster boys for
about five years.
This was probably three or fouryears ago.
We finally stopped.
(08:02):
Foster boys in the US are age 7to 17, and they were homeless.
I mean, their parents wereeither in jail or on the street,
or maybe a parent had died.
Anyway, they were wards of thestate.
They were put into a group homeand we had the privilege of
going in for an hour every weekand try to teach them the Bible.
They had an attention span ofabout five minutes and here I
(08:28):
was trying to teach biblicalworldview from the DNA and the
sacred-secular divide to kidsthat didn't know the Bible
existed really.
Anyway, what I would dooftentimes let's say I was
teaching on Sermon on the Mount,a story out of Jesus in Galilee
, or teaching in Galilee, and Iwould take Google Earth on my
laptop and I would zoom in and Iwould take it down to the house
(08:49):
.
I don't know if you can do thisin Africa, but in the United
States we have.
You know, they've got maps andyou can look at the house and
they'd see their house andthey'd see the van parked in the
driveway and the backyard andthe dog back there, whatever.
And then I'd zoom up, becausemany of these kids had never
been out of Phoenix, much lessArizona.
So I'd zoom out and they'd seePhoenix and I'd say here we are
in Phoenix, and then out andyou'd see the state of Arizona,
(09:11):
out, roll around the world, goover the Mediterranean, drop
down over Israel and then startgoing down into Israel.
Finally, I found the Sea ofGalilee and then, right on the
hill, we ended up on a hill, youknow, outside of Capernaum or
something like that I go, thisis where the story is, and we
give them a context.
Oh, this is how I fit in, thisis where it is in the world, and
we have the same.
(09:31):
I'd like to do the same thing,only by zooming out, by looking
at the concept of the kingdom ofGod, and so I'd just like to
unpack some principles for thekingdom of God, and actually
there's four of them.
I think the kingdom of God,really as an overarching concept
, helps us make sense of the OldTestament, the New Testament.
(09:55):
It helps us understand theroles of the triune God, father,
son, holy Spirit.
It helps us understand Jesus'life, his death, his
resurrection, his sending of theSpirit.
Helps us understand big wordslike sanctification,
justification, consummation, asDaryl puts it.
So I'd like to just look forthe next few minutes at this
(10:19):
idea of the kingdom of God.
There's four points I'd like tohighlight.
One is that the kingdom of Godis the gospel that Jesus
preached.
The second is that the kingdomof God is the story of God's
rule coming to earth.
It's the story of the Bible.
Third one is the kingdom.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like God's will beingdone on earth as it is in heaven
(10:40):
.
It looks like God'srighteousness being done on
earth.
And the last point is that thekingdom is inseparable from the
rule of the Holy Spirit, theSpirit of God.
We'll start with the first one.
If you go to any evangelicalchurch on a Sunday morning in
the US, you'll hear the wordgospel used multiple times.
And that makes sense becauseit's central to our faith.
(11:02):
It's central to the Christianmessage and what catches your
attention if you're reading theBible is that when Jesus
preached the gospel, he waspreaching the gospel of the
kingdom.
We don't usually think that,but here's some verses.
Now, after John was put inprison, jesus came to Galilee
preaching the gospel of thekingdom of God and saying the
time is fulfilled and thekingdom of God is at hand.
(11:24):
Repent and believe in thegospel of the kingdom of God.
And saying the time isfulfilled and the kingdom of God
is at hand, repent and believein the gospel.
And he went throughout allGalilee teaching their
synagogues and proclaiming thegospel of the kingdom and
healing every disease and everyaffliction.
Jesus speaking, the law and theprophets were proclaimed until
John came.
Since that time, the gospel ofthe kingdom has been preached
and everyone is forcing his wayinto it.
(11:46):
If you were at a global forumeight years ago, you would have
heard Hein Van Wyk preach onthat verse alone.
It was powerful Jesus speakingagain, and this gospel of the
kingdom will be proclaimedthroughout the whole world as a
testimony to all the nations,and then the end will come.
When Jesus proclaimed the gospel, he proclaimed the gospel of
(12:07):
the kingdom.
This was his main message.
Here it says when crowdslearned it, they followed him
and he welcomed them and spoketo them of the kingdom of God.
Even after he rose again fromthe dead, he preached the gospel
of the kingdom, and it's clearin Acts 1-3.
He presented himself alive tothem after his suffering, by
many proofs appearing to themduring 40 days.
And what did he talk about?
(12:29):
The kingdom of God.
He taught his disciples to pray, and we're very familiar with
this.
Pray then like this our Fatherin heaven, hallowed be your name
, your kingdom come, your willbe done, he said.
You know he gave many things,many teachings to his disciples
and his followers.
He said one thing I want you toseek first, and that was the
(12:50):
kingdom.
Seek first the kingdom of Godand his righteousness, and all
these things will be added toyou, he said it was at hand.
From that time Jesus began topreach, saying repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand,it's a hand's length away, it's
very near Matthew 12, 28,.
He says but if it is by theSpirit of God that I cast out
(13:12):
demons, then the kingdom of Godhas come upon you, it's arrived
among you, it's right here.
This is interesting.
When Nicodemus went to seeJesus, he said you know, you
must be a teacher sent from God,because no one could do these
amazing works that you do if youweren't a teacher from God.
(13:33):
And it's like.
It's like somebody comes to meand says how are you, dwight?
And I go, or I ask for them howare you?
And they say Dwight, you needto believe in Jesus.
Because in Jesus' response toNicodemus, he just cut through
all the chaff and just wentstraight to this verse.
Truly, truly, I say to youunless one is born again, he
cannot sing the kingdom of God.
(13:54):
He told his followers proclaimthe kingdom, leave the dead to
bury their dead, but as for you,go and proclaim the kingdom of
God.
Out of the 40 parables thatJesus taught, 17 of them were
about the kingdom.
18, sorry.
So I think you get the point.
Jesus proclaimed the gospel,and when he did so, it was the
(14:16):
kingdom.
The kingdom was Jesus' maintheme.
When your pastor on a Sundaymorning is referring to the
gospel, my well, I don't assume.
I know that he's referring tothe gospel of the cross, the
gospel of the grace of Christ,and yet Jesus is speaking of the
gospel of the kingdom.
So then you ask well, are theretwo different gospels?
(14:39):
Is there a gospel of grace thatPaul talked about and a gospel
of the kingdom that Jesusproclaimed?
Actually, there's one word andmany of you know this, but we're
going to unpack it a little bitand that's this Greek word
euangelion.
For all of you Greek scholars,it occurs 130 times in the New
Testament as a noun or as a verb.
(15:00):
It literally means good message.
However, it's not just anymessage, but it's a town crier
saying I have got some news foryou that's gonna change your
life.
It's life altering.
It's like the war has ended.
That kind of news.
You don't have cancer.
That kind of news.
It's life altering.
(15:21):
But then we ask the questionwell, why are there two words in
the English Bible?
Now you probably I'm speakingto English Bible readers here I
have no idea what your M HartBible says, even in Spanish.
I don't know how they translateeuangelion in Spanish, but in
English you'll find it's gospeland it's good news.
If you're reading a King James,it's pretty much all gospel.
(15:43):
If you're reading a newtranslation, a modern, living
translation, it's all good news.
If you read ESV or NIV, it'slike mixed.
Sometimes it's gospel,sometimes it's good news.
The question is, how did thathappen?
Well, here's how it happened.
John Wycliffe, I think 1500s.
(16:04):
Ken Ekstrom would know theexact day, I'm sure 1509 or 1522
, I don't know something aboutearlier, okay, earlier than that
.
Anyway, he was the first.
Wycliffe was the first totranslate the Greek New
Testament into the Englishlanguage and at the time, old
English good news was godspelland that word we don't say that
(16:25):
anymore.
It evolved to become good news,but the translators shortened
the O to an A, because itsounded like God, I think, and
kept the word godspell, whicheventually became gospel.
And I ask, well, why is thatimportant?
Well, for me, I give moreweight to the word gospel than I
(16:49):
give to the word good news.
Good news could be the price ofyou know, petrol went down last
week but the gospel, whoa, whoa.
That's the message of Jesus,you know.
And yet it's good news.
It's life-altering good news.
Why is this important.
(17:15):
I think we can sometimes limitour understanding of the kingdom
by referring to it as good newsand the gospel of the cross as
the gospel, when in Jesus' mindthere were not two gospels,
there was a set of a good newsof the kingdom and there was a
(17:35):
good news of the cross.
Paul would unpack the good newsof the cross and it's like
Jesus knew that the good news ofthe cross was coming and he
knew that it was critical toachieve the good news of the
cross was coming and he knewthat it was critical to achieve
the good news of the kingdom.
It's like there was going to begood news of an antibiotic,
because with that antibioticthere would be the good news of
(17:56):
healing.
If you were alive in 1941 inAmerica, you had good news on
D-Day when you learned that theAllies had established a beach
hold on Normandy, because youknew that good news on D-Day
when you learned that the Allieshad established a beach hold on
Normandy, because you knew thatgood news was going to be good
news of eventually probablywinning the war, we had a sense
if we could just get on thecontinent, the Allies could win.
(18:16):
So one good news led to thenext good news.
They're both good news.
So the life-altering good news,the gospel of the cross, makes
possible the life-altering goodnews, gospel of the kingdom.
My encouragement to you wouldbe, when you're reading your
(18:36):
Bible, if you see gospel, thinkgood news.
If you see good news, thinkgospel.
If you give that more weight,they're interchangeable.
The second one, the kingdom ofGod, is the story of God's rule
coming to earth.
It's the story of the Bible.
It begins in Genesis 1 and endsin Revelation 22.
You know the story.
(18:57):
It began with God creating theheavens and the earth and every
day he sat back and looked athis work he's the only one that
really can examine his own workand said whoa, I did a good job,
that is really good.
He made the birds to fly andteam and the fish to swarm.
The birds swarm, the fish teamAnyway, multiplication.
And at the very end he createdman.
(19:19):
And he says what did he say?
He said it's very good Becausehe looked at his creation and he
, as Daryl says, he knew it wasperfect but it wasn't complete
and he knew the potential.
He knew how well it worked.
I am fascinated by finding outhow biology works.
(19:40):
These days, the scientists aretaking understanding of cells
and nanobiology to whole newlevels.
I was looking at a.
I wish I had time I'd show youthis video of a hummingbird and
how it actually sucks nectarfrom a flower.
It's actually got two tubesthat go down and they're coils,
and the coils grab the nectarand pull it back in and it
(20:00):
happens in a 20th of a secondand it's a beautiful little bird
that's just flipping his wingsand I'm like how did God do that
?
We haven't figured that out yet.
Anyway, he made creation soperfect and he looked at it and
said it's very good, it's goingto flourish, it's going to be
exactly the way I wanted it to.
And he was in charge.
We think of God's rule comingto the earth At that point in
(20:25):
life.
He was in charge.
He reminded Job of this in Job38.
He said Job was going throughsuffering and had all these
questions to God and finally Godsat him down and said Brace
yourself like a man, job,because I have some questions
for you and you must answer them.
Where were you when I laid thefoundations of the earth?
Do you know the laws of theuniverse?
Can you use them to regulatethe earth?
(20:46):
God was king, he was in charge.
He set it up, he created it.
If you make something, you ownit, it's yours.
You're in charge.
What's interesting, if notamazing and you know the story
and we're going to talk atlength about it this week is
that God created this amazingearth and then he put human
beings in charge of week.
He said God created thisamazing earth and then he put
(21:07):
human beings in charge of it.
He said I am going to give youAdam and Eve responsible for
this earth.
You are the ones that are goingto rule over it Psalms 8, 6,.
We know that from Genesis 1, 27and 28, but we also see it in
Psalms 8, 6.
You have given him dominion,rule, governorship over the
(21:28):
works of your hands.
You have put all things underhis feet.
So here we're back to allthings.
He's going to reconcile allthings, but in the beginning he
put all things under his feet.
Now, you and I, we can't evenfathom that, because we can
hardly control anything, youknow I mean.
Well, we can control somethings, but not all things.
And yet that was the way Godset it up.
(21:49):
His kingdom was that he wasgoing to be king, but we were
going to govern Darrell Millercalls.
He said he made us vice regents, put us in charge.
2019.
In the Panama, we had a globalforum and Vishal Mangalwadi
spoke on this verse.
He said if you made a kingdomof priests to our God and they
(22:13):
shall reign on the earth, theKing James translates that
you've made us kings and prieststo our God and we shall reign
on the earth.
And then, if you move furtheron in Revelation, to the very
last chapter, you see Godsitting on the throne and
there's people around him andthey will need no light, of lamp
or sun for the Lord, god willbe their light and they will
(22:33):
reign forever and ever.
So you see this full circle.
It started reigning in Genesis1, and at the end we reign
forever and ever and ever.
I found this.
I was doing, you know,definitions of the kingdom.
(22:54):
There's a pastor in California.
He's a pastor, an author, awriter.
He actually wrote a book aboutthe kingdom.
He put this.
He wrote he said the kingdom ofGod is God's reign through
God's people in God's place.
Very simple, but very clear, andI was taken back by the brevity
of it and it's hard for us tosee that, because we look at the
(23:18):
world, we look at ourselves, welook at life through Genesis 3.
And we know that Adam and Eve,through Genesis 3.
And we know that Adam and Eve,you know, fell.
They fell into sin, theyfollowed Satan's deception.
And now we know that from 1John 5.19, we know that we are
from God and the whole worldlies in the power of the evil
(23:40):
one.
So, basically, the kingshipthat we were going to hold, that
we were given, is transferredto Satan and now we're under his
dominion.
We're captive to sin.
But God didn't change his mind.
It's not like he said wow, thatdidn't work.
I made them rulers of all of mycreation.
(24:00):
I put them in charge ofeverything.
They blew it.
I need a new plan, got to comeup with a new idea.
He didn't do that.
Instead, he went to Abraham,made him a promise, said I will
lead you.
And he chose a people of Israeland said you will be my people
and I will be your God.
I will lead you and bless youin a good path if you follow and
(24:23):
obey me.
And then he gave them the Torah, he gave them his commandments.
I have a friend who's atheologian.
He says if you ever readLeviticus it's like God's
silverware drawer.
And I don't read Leviticus thatmuch because it's just a lot of
silverware.
But basically it's, you know,our silverware drawers.
We put the knives here, we putthe forks here, the spoons here
dessert spoons on top someplace,and if you're a good husband,
(24:46):
you don't mess with that, youkeep them in their place, you
don't mess them up.
Basically, god was saying I'mgoing to teach you how to live
reconciled.
I'm going to teach you how tolive in a way that you live in
alignment with me, with yourselfas a human being, in terms of
your hygiene and your life, withone another and with the rest
(25:08):
of creation.
And so we see that unpackedthroughout Leviticus God giving
rules about how to live.
But we also know that thepeople of Israel failed
miserably.
At their best they did somethings, but at their worst it
was a travesty.
But the prophets never lostsight of God's promise and they
(25:30):
said hey, somebody's coming whowill put the world right.
And we know that story.
I took a class on the kingdom ofGod in college and I kept the
book.
It was written in 1953, and Iread it about a year ago again,
and I was impressed by one quotewhich the author said.
It's John Bright.
He says the Old and the NewTestament thus stand together as
(25:52):
the two acts of a single drama.
The Bible is one book.
Had we to give it a title, wemight with justice call it the
book of the coming kingdom ofGod.
That is indeed, indeed itscentral theme.
Everywhere In the New Testament,however, there is this
difference the kingdom of Godhas become also the kingdom of
Jesus, the Messiah, and thekingdom is actually at hand.
(26:16):
So then we have to ask whatdoes the kingdom look like?
What is this thing?
What is the kingdom?
And I'm impressed by Bob Moffatbecause he takes everything and
simplifies it very well, and healways goes back to this
teaching on prayer to thedisciples where he says if you
want to know what the kingdom is, it's his will being done on
(26:38):
earth as it is in heaven.
And I like Matthew 6.33, whereit also says Seek first the
kingdom of God and hisrighteousness, and all these
things will be added unto you,the righteousness.
There is the word sedeke and itbasically, if you look it up,
it says righteousness is the actof being righteous.
Well, thank you very much, butto dig deeper into righteousness
(27:00):
, it's to be aligned.
It's to be straight, it's to becorrect.
It's when a carpenter takes aplumb bob and hangs it by the
wall to see if the wall istilted or straight.
Or now we use laser levels tosee if the pictures are hung
right.
It's being aligned with God'sintentions.
At this point I was asking whatdoes the kingdom of God
(27:22):
actually look like?
And I like what Abraham Kuyperdid back in 1898 or whatever.
He looked at the world and hesaid there's three parts of life
that every religion speaks to,every philosophy speaks to.
And these were them.
(27:46):
One is what is ultimate reality?
In this case I already put theanswer down.
In the Christian religion it'sGod.
Who is man?
We understand Imago Dei, theindividual, who are others, who
are mankind, and then what's ourrelationship to creation?
He said that every philosophy,every religion answers questions
about those three areas, andthe answers you give give
(28:11):
completely different looks ofcultures and worlds.
It creates discernibledifference, and we know that
because ideas have consequences,ideas bear fruit, and we know
that because ideas haveconsequences, ideas bear fruit.
In our case I was looking.
Well, what is God's will foreach of these areas.
(28:32):
Imago Dei is in the middle, notbecause we're the center of the
universe.
I put it there in this diagrambecause God created us unique
individuals.
He knows our name, he knows thenumber of hairs on our heads.
He will judge us individuallyand we are the ones that he is
called to relate to himself, toothers and to creation.
(28:55):
So each one of us has a uniqueand individual responsibility
before God.
And try to get at this.
So what's our relationship toGod?
We can say, well, it's to loveGod, it's to fear God.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Fear of God is the beginning ofwisdom.
It says in Proverbs trust inthe Lord with all your heart,
(29:16):
all your mind.
Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
But for me, I think the wordworship really captures it.
The first three commands in theTen Commandments are about have
no other gods before me, don'tmake any other idols, don't take
my name in vain.
It's this idea that we lift Godup.
We are humble before God.
(29:38):
He is the ruler.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like people who arehumble before God, not because
we humble ourselves, but becausewe know who God is.
We can't create hummingbirds.
We can't even begin to createhummingbirds In terms of ourself
.
I like the word steward.
(29:58):
We're going to be called toaccount by God.
Our names will be written inthe Lamb's book of life and he
will open that book and he'lllook at each one of our lives
and say what have you done withit?
What did you do with your life?
I put you here, I put you onthis earth, what did you do?
How did you live?
And he calls us to steward.
We think of the five talents usto steward.
(30:21):
We think of the five talents Interms of our relationship to
others.
Ina will unpack this later inthe week.
I think the word love capturesit, not the affection, but the
attitude of love that we wouldseek the best God's intentions
for the other person.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like people lovingothers and then, of course,
creation.
We rule, and this covers a huge, huge territory.
(30:44):
If you think about creativityand work and play and sleep and
washing dishes and making yourbed and everything.
Well, I heard one guy saidwhat's the definition of
creation?
It's everything that is not God.
So if you think of rulingeverything that is not God,
(31:06):
except for other people, youcan't rule them.
But that's a lot of things torule over in every part of life.
So what is the kingdom?
What does it look like?
Luke Allen (31:18):
It's the way you answer these three questions.
Dwight Vogt (31:21):
Last one the kingdom of God is inseparable
from the role of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.
I will add one phrase to thisJeremy Treat this was his
definition the pastor, and Iwould suggest we say by God's
Spirit.
I love this verse.
(31:42):
We tend to think the Holy Spiritis a New Testament invention.
But throughout the OldTestament you see the work of
the Spirit of God, beginning inGenesis 1, where it hovered over
creation.
I like this one because Bezalel, of course, was the temple guy
in charge of the templecraftsmanship and filled with
the Spirit of God, with abilityand intelligence, with knowledge
of all craftsmanship, andfilled with spirit of God, with
ability and intelligence, withknowledge of all craftsmanship,
(32:03):
to devise artistic designs towork in gold, silver, bronze,
and cutting stones for settingand carving wood, to work in
every craft.
So here the spirit of God wasput on Basilel and gave him all
of these skills I love to dodo-it-yourself projects.
All of these skills I love todo do-it-yourself projects.
(32:23):
It's to my vein.
I think Scott just smiled at mebecause he knows that you know
how it is when you're going on atrip and everything starts
breaking in your house becauseyour wife's going to be alone.
Sure enough, the day before Iwas to leave, I was getting
packed.
All at once I sprung a leakright next to my water heater on
the main line that comes intomy house.
(32:44):
Well, one way to have dominionis to just call a plumber, which
is probably the smartest way tohave dominion.
Let the plumber have dominion,God's already gifted him.
But I think, well, why spendmoney on something I can do
myself?
And so, you know, I tackled it.
I looked, I think I can fixthis, and sure enough I got the
(33:05):
parts.
And I got some packs and ashark bit, kind of a easy fix.
Put it together, turn the wateron drip, drip, drip, drip, drip
.
I'm thinking I did it.
You know what's?
I can't leave a dripping waterline, you know, in my garage for
my wife.
So I took it like that Well,I'll just take it apart and see
if I did something wrong.
I took it all apart and itlooked fine.
And then and I often do this,but usually I pray beforehand,
(33:29):
but this time I didn't because Iwas in a hurry.
But I just go.
Spirit of God, give me wisdom.
I got to get this fixed, and tocall a plumber will take
another six to eight hours andit'll be late.
Lord, help me.
And so I call on this prayer,and so I put it back together
and I'm thinking, well, maybe Ijust need to push harder.
And I pushed, and sure enoughit clicked a little bit and I
(33:51):
thought, whoa, that wasdifferent.
Put it back together, turnedthe water on.
It didn't leak.
So anyway, it's a practicalHoly Spirit that he's given us.
If you're a leader, you need theSpirit of God.
We know that Joshua, son of Nun, was filled with the Spirit.
King Saul had two good days, Ifyou read 1 Samuel, and on those
(34:14):
two good days the Spirit of Godfilled him and he prophesied
and he defeated the Ammoniteswho were coming against him, and
then the people gave thanks toGod.
So his two good days werespirit-filled good days.
We know that David was filledwith the Spirit.
He said after he sinned pleasedon't take your Holy Spirit from
me, I can't live.
(34:37):
Daniel, for all of youadministrators, the Bible
doesn't say he was filled withthe Spirit of God.
It says that Nebuchadnezzarrecognized that he put Daniel in
charge and he had these dreamsand he said hey, I know that you
are able to interpret my dream,for the Spirit of the Holy God
is in you.
That's actually mentionedseveral times.
It's not just Nebuchadnezzar.
Darius, I think, or Cyrus, oneof those later leaders, said the
(35:00):
same thing.
And then Jesus he was prophesiedat Isaiah that the Spirit of
God would be upon him.
And then he, in Luke 4, opensthe scroll in the temple and
reads the Spirit of the Lord isupon me because he has anointed
me to proclaim good news to thepoor.
And he said Today thisscripture is fulfilled.
In your hearing, Jesus wasfully God and fully man.
(35:23):
He was tempted in all points,just like we are.
How did he do it, if he's fullyman?
And I believe it was because hewas fully possessed with the
Spirit.
He was conceived by the Spiritand the Spirit was on him.
We know this from his baptism,John 1.32.
(35:44):
Luke 4 1, full of the HolySpirit, returned from the Jordan
, was led by the Spirit into thewilderness.
Interesting that the Spirit ofGod actually led him into a very
difficult situation thewilderness where he was tempted.
Luke 4 14 and Jesus returned inpower, the Spirit, to Galilee.
We need the Spirit to livekingdom lives.
I think we know that, but weneed to be reminded of that.
(36:07):
Romans 7 is really powerful.
I mean, that's where Paul issaying I don't know why I do
what I do.
I have the desire to do what isright, but then I don't have
the ability to carry it out.
My will wants to do this, butmy flesh wants to do this.
And he goes on and on andfinally, in Romans, the next
(36:29):
chapter that he opens up withThanks be to God through Jesus
Christ, our Lord, for the law ofthe Spirit of life has set you
free, in Christ Jesus, from thelaw of sin and death.
He goes on to say do not getdrunk with wine, for that is
debauchery, but be filled withthe Spirit.
I think that's an interestingcontrast.
If you've ever seen a drunkperson, they're not in control
(36:51):
very much.
Jesus talked about our need forhim.
I am the vine, you are thebranches.
I am the tree, you are thebranches.
Whoever abides in me and I inhim, it is that bears much fruit
.
For apart from me, you can donothing.
I'd like to finish by justsharing a few verses from the
(37:11):
Old and New Testament, and I'lljust read through these.
Ezekiel 36, we have thispromise I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit inyou.
I will remove from you yourheart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh, and I will putmy spirit in you and move you.
And so is Paul's answer tofollow my decrees and be careful
(37:31):
to keep my laws.
The Spirit of God was going toenable people to obey to follow
Isaiah 44, for I will pour wateron the thirsty land and streams
on the dry ground.
To obey to follow Isaiah 44,for I will pour water on the
thirsty land and streams on thedry ground.
I will pour out my Spirit onyour offspring and my blessing
on your descendants.
I love this promise.
I have three adult children andtwo spouses that they married,
(37:56):
and this is my prayer for mykids that the Spirit would be
poured out on them.
It says this they will springup like grass in a meadow, like
poplar trees, by flowing streams.
I love the picture of trees andstreams.
If you know Psalms 1, it talksof who's the man who follows God
, who walks in the counsel ofthe ungodly.
(38:17):
He doesn't walk in the counselof the ungodly.
He's like a tree planted bystreams of water that bears
fruit in its season and its leafdoes not wither Again.
Jeremiah 17 says the same thing, and then we see in John 7, 37,
the fulfillment of that promise.
On the last day of the feast,the great day, jesus stood up
(38:39):
and cried out if anyone thirsts,let him come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me, as thescripture has said, out of his
heart will flow rivers of livingwater.
So we have the water feeding tothe trees, and now we have
water flowing from his heart.
Now, this he said about thespirit whom those who believed
(38:59):
in him were to receive, for asyet the Spirit had not been
given because Jesus was not yetglorified.
Of course, we know whathappened.
Jesus fulfilled the covenant byoffering his life as an
atonement, a perfect atonement,for our sin was taken and that
paid for our sins, so God couldrecognize us as his children and
(39:20):
actually give us his spirit.
And Jesus was exalted and puton the throne, and now he sits
with authority and power, andthat power is available to us
Ezekiel 47.
I'm going to paraphrase it.
I love this promise of thespirit he talks about.
It says Ezekiel's talking, hegoes, the man brought me back to
(39:41):
the entrance of the Spirit.
He talks about Ezekiel'stalking, he goes.
The man brought me back to theentrance of the temple and I saw
water coming out from under thethreshold, the doorway of the
temple, and it was flowingtoward the east.
Then he looked further and hesays and I saw that it was
coming from under the south sideof the temple, south of the
altar, and when I think south, Ithink global south and I go.
(40:02):
Does that mean the global southis where the outpouring of the
Spirit, you know, would be?
Anyway, that's going too far,probably, but it was coming from
the south.
And then he leads them outthrough the north gate.
So he goes north, and it's adry and barren land, probably,
and comes to the east gate andhe still see water flowing from
the south.
And then it says the man withthe measuring line in his hand
(40:25):
started measuring out a thousandcubits and the water was
flowing, it was ankle deep, andhe walks another thousand cubits
meters and it's up to his kneesand he walks another thousand
measures off, another thousandmeters and it's up to where His
waist.
Then he walks another thousandmeasures off, another thousand
meters and it's up to where Hiswaist.
Then he goes another thousandmeters and he says wait now it
(40:46):
was a river I could not crossbecause the water had risen and
was deep enough to swim in.
And then the man who wasleading him around said this,
son of man, ezekiel, do you seethis?
Do you see what's happening?
Then he takes him further andhe leads him up to the riverbank
and he says hey, look, he saw amultitude of trees growing on
(41:08):
both sides of the river.
Then he said you know, thiswater flows toward the east and
goes down into the Arab orsomething like that, rababa.
But where it empties into thegreat sea, it makes the salt
water fresh and there will beswarms of living creatures
wherever this water flows.
At one point he says where thewater flows, everything will
(41:32):
live.
And he says there's going to befishermen on the side of the
bank and they're going to bethrowing their nets.
And I think of Jesus tellingone of his apostles Peter, I
will make you fishers of men.
And then he says there's goingto be fish of every kind, fish
of all kinds, and I think of allthe nations, all the tribes,
all the tongues of the world.
(41:52):
And then he goes but I'm goingto leave some salt, I'm going to
leave the marshes and someswamps salty.
I'm not going to make themfresh.
There will always be swamps andmarshes.
Then he goes on and says allkinds of fruit trees will be
growing on the banks of thisriver Again, a picture of global
humanity.
(42:12):
And he says and their leaf willnot wither and their fruit will
not fail and they will bearfruit continuously because the
water of the sanctuary, thewater of the throne, is flowing
to them.
And then it says and theirfruit will be good for food and
their leaves for the healing ofthe nations.
This was the promise to Ezekiel.
(42:36):
Go to the last chapter of theBible and what do you see?
The angel showed me the riverof the water of life, as clear
as crystal, flowing from thethrone of God and of the Lamb,
down the middle of the greatstreet of the city.
And on each side of the riverstood the tree of life bearing
twelve crops of fruit, yieldingits fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree arefor the healing of the nations.
Here we have a picture of theSpirit of God flowing.
(42:59):
People have partaken of thetree of life.
They themselves have becometemples of the living God.
They become life-giving treesthemselves, like it refers to us
in Jeremiah 17 and Psalms 1.
And now our leaves are theleaves of the healing of the
nations, god's reign throughGod's people and God's place by
(43:22):
God's spirit.
The kingdom of God is a peoplereconciled to God, empowered by
the spirit of God to live inalignment with him in bringing
reconciliation to the worldaround them.
Thank you.
Hi friends, welcome, or welcome back to Ideas have
Consequences.
My name is Luke Allen, I'm theproducer of this podcast and, as
many of you guys know, this isthe podcast of the Disciple
Nations Alliance, which is aglobal discipleship training
ministry that has been able toreach people from over a hundred
nations worldwide over the lastnearly 30 years and, as such,
our real focus here is ondiscipleship training.
(00:24):
So from time to time we like toshare one of those trainings
with you guys here on thepodcast.
So for today's episode, we willbe sharing a talk from the one
and only Dwight Vogt, author,speaker and co-host of this
podcast.
This talk is from our last DNAGlobal Forum three years ago in
Ethiopia.
The theme of that forum wasfoundational principles for
(00:45):
flourishing nations.
This talk is the first sessionfrom that forum and it's on a
topic that I would say isprobably one of Dwight's areas
of expertise and something thatwe can all learn from.
And one last point before we getrolling today, if you are a
regular listener to this podcast, ideas have Consequences, we
are so thankful for your timeand attention and I just wanted
(01:07):
to let you guys know a littlebehind the scenes.
I just actually wrapped upscheduling all of our interviews
and guests for the remainder ofthis summer and fall and, as
such, I'm really excited for theupcoming conversations and
topics that we're going to becovering here on the show.
So I just wanted to give thatas a little bit of a tease for
you guys to stay tuned here onthe podcast.
Ideas have consequences.
(01:27):
And also, I guess, one finallast point before we get started
today.
Dwight would probablyappreciate it if I mentioned
that he did give this talk rightafter an 18 hour flight over to
Ethiopia, and he told me afterthe talk that he was actually
exhausted during it.
However, if he hadn't told methat, I probably wouldn't have
guessed it, because I actuallythought this was one of my
favorite talks that I've everheard him give, and I think that
(01:49):
each one of you guys will agreewith me as well after listening
to it.
So, without further ado, dwightvote.
Dwight Vogt (01:58):
I've been assigned the first principle.
It says this God works inhistory to fulfill his
redemptive purpose, to redeempeople and bless the nations.
He grants us the privilege ofparticipating in carrying out
his purposes in the world.
And then Scott read for us theverse that we often go to for
this principle, which is inGenesis 12, two to three, where
(02:22):
he says to Abram I will make youa great nation and I will bless
you and make your name great,so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who blessyou, and him who dishonors you I
will curse, and in you, all thefamilies of the earth shall be
blessed.
Oftentimes we'll turn next toColossians 1.20, and we're very
familiar with this.
(02:42):
It's a very favorite DNA verse,for God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in him, andwe're very familiar with this.
It's a very favorite DNA verse,for God was pleased to have all
his fullness dwell in him and,through him, to reconcile to
himself all things, whetherthings on earth or things in
heaven, by making peace throughhis blood shed on the cross.
When you think about God'sblessing to Abraham coming
through his lineage, jesusChrist, we know that Christ came
(03:03):
to reconcile us, and we're veryfamiliar with the idea of him
reconciling us to God.
Colossians 1.20 takes thatamazing truth and expands it and
says yeah, I'm gonna reconcileyou to God, I'm gonna make you
right with the Father in spiteof your sin.
I'm gonna cover that.
But then I'm gonna reconcileall things, heaven and earth.
(03:23):
And then he gives us theministry 2 Corinthians, 5, 17,.
And all this is from God, whohas reconciled us to himself
through Christ and gave us theministry of reconciliation.
That God was reconciling theworld to himself in Christ, not
counting man's sins against him,and he has committed to us the
message of reconciliation.
(03:44):
And he has committed to us themessage of reconciliation, the
work of reconciliation.
So we look at all aspects oflife and we're involved in
proclaiming God's message ofreconciliation for all things.
The fallen world principle isdifferent.
This is probably more ofmaterialism and atheism than
(04:07):
anything else.
But I'll just give some verybrief ideas because I think
throughout the week others willtouch more deeply on each one of
these.
One would be there is no realoverarching purpose in history.
There is no true ortranscendent purpose for human
life.
Most of the people groups wework with this would be the case
(04:27):
, I think of my country.
Materialism and atheism hasreigned there for many years now
and I think sometimes, ifthere's no overarching purpose,
we're just going to survive, eat, drink and be happy and make
the best of the day, make upyour own purpose, at best
control your own destiny.
And the results are twofold.
(04:48):
One is you're either fatalistic, which we have a growing
population in my country offatalistic people.
The streets are full ofhomeless and drug addicted and
actually apathy in our youngergeneration, just the idea of
hopelessness and fatalism.
And the flip side of that isarrogance.
(05:10):
We saw this in COVID.
It's like we can do anything wewant.
We can solve this disease, wecan control you, we can control
life, and science is the answer.
And we know that arrogancereally is coupled with folly.
Arrogance is not wisdom iscoupled with folly.
Arrogance is not wisdom.
I'm not an expert on pantheismor Hinduism or New Age
(05:31):
spiritualism, but I know thatthere's a sense that we're one
with the universe.
That's the main concept interms of the purpose of history.
We're reincarnation, but towhat?
Will we be higher, will we belower?
Will we be a tree?
Will we be a woman, Will we bea man?
And then there's a Christianside of this, which and I wrote
(05:51):
this just as getting in touchwith the universe and your own
goodness.
I recently read UniversalChrist by Richard Rohr.
He's a Catholic priest and he'stalking about how, basically,
god's goodness is in us and it'sour job to find that goodness
and to reveal the Christ in us.
And never one speaks of thecross, never one speaks of the
(06:12):
fall.
It's this idea that we're onewith the universe, we're one
with goodness, we're one withGod.
We just need to go deep withinourselves and we can find truth.
And again, the answer is eitheryou find out, you can't.
There's a sense of fatalism orarrogance.
Yes, I can Last one, animism,folk, traditional religion.
But here we have our fate, ourdestiny, and spirits play the
(06:36):
dominant role in all of natureand life.
The best we can do is live inharmony with the spirit world,
appease the spirits.
There's actually a Christianside of this too.
We were talking about thesacred-secular divide and
there's a sense that in theprosperity gospel, if I can
control God, if I can pray theright way, if I can say the
(06:57):
right words, I can get God to dowhat I want him to do.
And it's almost a form ofanimism.
And again, in animism, unlessyou know you can control things.
It's fatalistic.
And the other opposite would bearrogance.
So what do we do if God'sworking in history to fulfill
(07:18):
his redemptive purpose and wehave the privilege of
participating?
We share Christ's message ofreconciliation with the world
and, by God's grace, weparticipate in that
reconciliation, we express it,we live it out, we demonstrate
it, we experience it.
I refer to this principle asoverarching because I think it's
(07:42):
fundamental really to thereason we're here this week, to
talk about our role in beingministers of reconciliation and
sharing that message.
But I'd like to take us up alittle higher than that.
My wife and I had the privilegeof teaching foster boys for
about five years.
This was probably three or fouryears ago.
We finally stopped.
(08:02):
Foster boys in the US are age 7to 17, and they were homeless.
I mean, their parents wereeither in jail or on the street,
or maybe a parent had died.
Anyway, they were wards of thestate.
They were put into a group homeand we had the privilege of
going in for an hour every weekand try to teach them the Bible.
They had an attention span ofabout five minutes and here I
(08:28):
was trying to teach biblicalworldview from the DNA and the
sacred-secular divide to kidsthat didn't know the Bible
existed really.
Anyway, what I would dooftentimes let's say I was
teaching on Sermon on the Mount,a story out of Jesus in Galilee
, or teaching in Galilee, and Iwould take Google Earth on my
laptop and I would zoom in and Iwould take it down to the house
(08:49):
.
I don't know if you can do thisin Africa, but in the United
States we have.
You know, they've got maps andyou can look at the house and
they'd see their house andthey'd see the van parked in the
driveway and the backyard andthe dog back there, whatever.
And then I'd zoom up, becausemany of these kids had never
been out of Phoenix, much lessArizona.
So I'd zoom out and they'd seePhoenix and I'd say here we are
in Phoenix, and then out andyou'd see the state of Arizona,
(09:11):
out, roll around the world, goover the Mediterranean, drop
down over Israel and then startgoing down into Israel.
Finally, I found the Sea ofGalilee and then, right on the
hill, we ended up on a hill, youknow, outside of Capernaum or
something like that I go, thisis where the story is, and we
give them a context.
Oh, this is how I fit in, thisis where it is in the world, and
we have the same.
(09:31):
I'd like to do the same thing,only by zooming out, by looking
at the concept of the kingdom ofGod, and so I'd just like to
unpack some principles for thekingdom of God, and actually
there's four of them.
I think the kingdom of God,really as an overarching concept
, helps us make sense of the OldTestament, the New Testament.
(09:55):
It helps us understand theroles of the triune God, father,
son, holy Spirit.
It helps us understand Jesus'life, his death, his
resurrection, his sending of theSpirit.
Helps us understand big wordslike sanctification,
justification, consummation, asDaryl puts it.
So I'd like to just look forthe next few minutes at this
(10:19):
idea of the kingdom of God.
There's four points I'd like tohighlight.
One is that the kingdom of Godis the gospel that Jesus
preached.
The second is that the kingdomof God is the story of God's
rule coming to earth.
It's the story of the Bible.
Third one is the kingdom.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like God's will beingdone on earth as it is in heaven
(10:40):
.
It looks like God'srighteousness being done on
earth.
And the last point is that thekingdom is inseparable from the
rule of the Holy Spirit, theSpirit of God.
We'll start with the first one.
If you go to any evangelicalchurch on a Sunday morning in
the US, you'll hear the wordgospel used multiple times.
And that makes sense becauseit's central to our faith.
(11:02):
It's central to the Christianmessage and what catches your
attention if you're reading theBible is that when Jesus
preached the gospel, he waspreaching the gospel of the
kingdom.
We don't usually think that,but here's some verses.
Now, after John was put inprison, jesus came to Galilee
preaching the gospel of thekingdom of God and saying the
time is fulfilled and thekingdom of God is at hand.
(11:24):
Repent and believe in thegospel of the kingdom of God.
And saying the time isfulfilled and the kingdom of God
is at hand, repent and believein the gospel.
And he went throughout allGalilee teaching their
synagogues and proclaiming thegospel of the kingdom and
healing every disease and everyaffliction.
Jesus speaking, the law and theprophets were proclaimed until
John came.
Since that time, the gospel ofthe kingdom has been preached
and everyone is forcing his wayinto it.
(11:46):
If you were at a global forumeight years ago, you would have
heard Hein Van Wyk preach onthat verse alone.
It was powerful Jesus speakingagain, and this gospel of the
kingdom will be proclaimedthroughout the whole world as a
testimony to all the nations,and then the end will come.
When Jesus proclaimed the gospel, he proclaimed the gospel of
(12:07):
the kingdom.
This was his main message.
Here it says when crowdslearned it, they followed him
and he welcomed them and spoketo them of the kingdom of God.
Even after he rose again fromthe dead, he preached the gospel
of the kingdom, and it's clearin Acts 1-3.
He presented himself alive tothem after his suffering, by
many proofs appearing to themduring 40 days.
And what did he talk about?
(12:29):
The kingdom of God.
He taught his disciples to pray, and we're very familiar with
this.
Pray then like this our Fatherin heaven, hallowed be your name
, your kingdom come, your willbe done, he said.
You know he gave many things,many teachings to his disciples
and his followers.
He said one thing I want you toseek first, and that was the
(12:50):
kingdom.
Seek first the kingdom of Godand his righteousness, and all
these things will be added toyou, he said it was at hand.
From that time Jesus began topreach, saying repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand,it's a hand's length away, it's
very near Matthew 12, 28,.
He says but if it is by theSpirit of God that I cast out
(13:12):
demons, then the kingdom of Godhas come upon you, it's arrived
among you, it's right here.
This is interesting.
When Nicodemus went to seeJesus, he said you know, you
must be a teacher sent from God,because no one could do these
amazing works that you do if youweren't a teacher from God.
(13:33):
And it's like.
It's like somebody comes to meand says how are you, dwight?
And I go, or I ask for them howare you?
And they say Dwight, you needto believe in Jesus.
Because in Jesus' response toNicodemus, he just cut through
all the chaff and just wentstraight to this verse.
Truly, truly, I say to youunless one is born again, he
cannot sing the kingdom of God.
(13:54):
He told his followers proclaimthe kingdom, leave the dead to
bury their dead, but as for you,go and proclaim the kingdom of
God.
Out of the 40 parables thatJesus taught, 17 of them were
about the kingdom.
18, sorry.
So I think you get the point.
Jesus proclaimed the gospel,and when he did so, it was the
(14:16):
kingdom.
The kingdom was Jesus' maintheme.
When your pastor on a Sundaymorning is referring to the
gospel, my well, I don't assume.
I know that he's referring tothe gospel of the cross, the
gospel of the grace of Christ,and yet Jesus is speaking of the
gospel of the kingdom.
So then you ask well, are theretwo different gospels?
(14:39):
Is there a gospel of grace thatPaul talked about and a gospel
of the kingdom that Jesusproclaimed?
Actually, there's one word andmany of you know this, but we're
going to unpack it a little bitand that's this Greek word
euangelion.
For all of you Greek scholars,it occurs 130 times in the New
Testament as a noun or as a verb.
(15:00):
It literally means good message.
However, it's not just anymessage, but it's a town crier
saying I have got some news foryou that's gonna change your
life.
It's life altering.
It's like the war has ended.
That kind of news.
You don't have cancer.
That kind of news.
It's life altering.
(15:21):
But then we ask the questionwell, why are there two words in
the English Bible?
Now you probably I'm speakingto English Bible readers here I
have no idea what your M HartBible says, even in Spanish.
I don't know how they translateeuangelion in Spanish, but in
English you'll find it's gospeland it's good news.
If you're reading a King James,it's pretty much all gospel.
(15:43):
If you're reading a newtranslation, a modern, living
translation, it's all good news.
If you read ESV or NIV, it'slike mixed.
Sometimes it's gospel,sometimes it's good news.
The question is, how did thathappen?
Well, here's how it happened.
John Wycliffe, I think 1500s.
(16:04):
Ken Ekstrom would know theexact day, I'm sure 1509 or 1522
, I don't know something aboutearlier, okay, earlier than that
.
Anyway, he was the first.
Wycliffe was the first totranslate the Greek New
Testament into the Englishlanguage and at the time, old
English good news was godspelland that word we don't say that
(16:25):
anymore.
It evolved to become good news,but the translators shortened
the O to an A, because itsounded like God, I think, and
kept the word godspell, whicheventually became gospel.
And I ask, well, why is thatimportant?
Well, for me, I give moreweight to the word gospel than I
(16:49):
give to the word good news.
Good news could be the price ofyou know, petrol went down last
week but the gospel, whoa, whoa.
That's the message of Jesus,you know.
And yet it's good news.
It's life-altering good news.
Why is this important.
(17:15):
I think we can sometimes limitour understanding of the kingdom
by referring to it as good newsand the gospel of the cross as
the gospel, when in Jesus' mindthere were not two gospels,
there was a set of a good newsof the kingdom and there was a
(17:35):
good news of the cross.
Paul would unpack the good newsof the cross and it's like
Jesus knew that the good news ofthe cross was coming and he
knew that it was critical toachieve the good news of the
cross was coming and he knewthat it was critical to achieve
the good news of the kingdom.
It's like there was going to begood news of an antibiotic,
because with that antibioticthere would be the good news of
(17:56):
healing.
If you were alive in 1941 inAmerica, you had good news on
D-Day when you learned that theAllies had established a beach
hold on Normandy, because youknew that good news on D-Day
when you learned that the Allieshad established a beach hold on
Normandy, because you knew thatgood news was going to be good
news of eventually probablywinning the war, we had a sense
if we could just get on thecontinent, the Allies could win.
(18:16):
So one good news led to thenext good news.
They're both good news.
So the life-altering good news,the gospel of the cross, makes
possible the life-altering goodnews, gospel of the kingdom.
My encouragement to you wouldbe, when you're reading your
(18:36):
Bible, if you see gospel, thinkgood news.
If you see good news, thinkgospel.
If you give that more weight,they're interchangeable.
The second one, the kingdom ofGod, is the story of God's rule
coming to earth.
It's the story of the Bible.
It begins in Genesis 1 and endsin Revelation 22.
You know the story.
(18:57):
It began with God creating theheavens and the earth and every
day he sat back and looked athis work he's the only one that
really can examine his own workand said whoa, I did a good job,
that is really good.
He made the birds to fly andteam and the fish to swarm.
The birds swarm, the fish teamAnyway, multiplication.
And at the very end he createdman.
(19:19):
And he says what did he say?
He said it's very good Becausehe looked at his creation and he
, as Daryl says, he knew it wasperfect but it wasn't complete
and he knew the potential.
He knew how well it worked.
I am fascinated by finding outhow biology works.
(19:40):
These days, the scientists aretaking understanding of cells
and nanobiology to whole newlevels.
I was looking at a.
I wish I had time I'd show youthis video of a hummingbird and
how it actually sucks nectarfrom a flower.
It's actually got two tubesthat go down and they're coils,
and the coils grab the nectarand pull it back in and it
(20:00):
happens in a 20th of a secondand it's a beautiful little bird
that's just flipping his wingsand I'm like how did God do that
?
We haven't figured that out yet.
Anyway, he made creation soperfect and he looked at it and
said it's very good, it's goingto flourish, it's going to be
exactly the way I wanted it to.
And he was in charge.
We think of God's rule comingto the earth At that point in
(20:25):
life.
He was in charge.
He reminded Job of this in Job38.
He said Job was going throughsuffering and had all these
questions to God and finally Godsat him down and said Brace
yourself like a man, job,because I have some questions
for you and you must answer them.
Where were you when I laid thefoundations of the earth?
Do you know the laws of theuniverse?
Can you use them to regulatethe earth?
(20:46):
God was king, he was in charge.
He set it up, he created it.
If you make something, you ownit, it's yours.
You're in charge.
What's interesting, if notamazing and you know the story
and we're going to talk atlength about it this week is
that God created this amazingearth and then he put human
beings in charge of week.
He said God created thisamazing earth and then he put
(21:07):
human beings in charge of it.
He said I am going to give youAdam and Eve responsible for
this earth.
You are the ones that are goingto rule over it Psalms 8, 6,.
We know that from Genesis 1, 27and 28, but we also see it in
Psalms 8, 6.
You have given him dominion,rule, governorship over the
(21:28):
works of your hands.
You have put all things underhis feet.
So here we're back to allthings.
He's going to reconcile allthings, but in the beginning he
put all things under his feet.
Now, you and I, we can't evenfathom that, because we can
hardly control anything, youknow I mean.
Well, we can control somethings, but not all things.
And yet that was the way Godset it up.
(21:49):
His kingdom was that he wasgoing to be king, but we were
going to govern Darrell Millercalls.
He said he made us vice regents, put us in charge.
2019.
In the Panama, we had a globalforum and Vishal Mangalwadi
spoke on this verse.
He said if you made a kingdomof priests to our God and they
(22:13):
shall reign on the earth, theKing James translates that
you've made us kings and prieststo our God and we shall reign
on the earth.
And then, if you move furtheron in Revelation, to the very
last chapter, you see Godsitting on the throne and
there's people around him andthey will need no light, of lamp
or sun for the Lord, god willbe their light and they will
(22:33):
reign forever and ever.
So you see this full circle.
It started reigning in Genesis1, and at the end we reign
forever and ever and ever.
I found this.
I was doing, you know,definitions of the kingdom.
(22:54):
There's a pastor in California.
He's a pastor, an author, awriter.
He actually wrote a book aboutthe kingdom.
He put this.
He wrote he said the kingdom ofGod is God's reign through
God's people in God's place.
Very simple, but very clear, andI was taken back by the brevity
of it and it's hard for us tosee that, because we look at the
(23:18):
world, we look at ourselves, welook at life through Genesis 3.
And we know that Adam and Eve,through Genesis 3.
And we know that Adam and Eve,you know, fell.
They fell into sin, theyfollowed Satan's deception.
And now we know that from 1John 5.19, we know that we are
from God and the whole worldlies in the power of the evil
(23:40):
one.
So, basically, the kingshipthat we were going to hold, that
we were given, is transferredto Satan and now we're under his
dominion.
We're captive to sin.
But God didn't change his mind.
It's not like he said wow, thatdidn't work.
I made them rulers of all of mycreation.
(24:00):
I put them in charge ofeverything.
They blew it.
I need a new plan, got to comeup with a new idea.
He didn't do that.
Instead, he went to Abraham,made him a promise, said I will
lead you.
And he chose a people of Israeland said you will be my people
and I will be your God.
I will lead you and bless youin a good path if you follow and
(24:23):
obey me.
And then he gave them the Torah, he gave them his commandments.
I have a friend who's atheologian.
He says if you ever readLeviticus it's like God's
silverware drawer.
And I don't read Leviticus thatmuch because it's just a lot of
silverware.
But basically it's, you know,our silverware drawers.
We put the knives here, we putthe forks here, the spoons here
dessert spoons on top someplace,and if you're a good husband,
(24:46):
you don't mess with that, youkeep them in their place, you
don't mess them up.
Basically, god was saying I'mgoing to teach you how to live
reconciled.
I'm going to teach you how tolive in a way that you live in
alignment with me, with yourselfas a human being, in terms of
your hygiene and your life, withone another and with the rest
(25:08):
of creation.
And so we see that unpackedthroughout Leviticus God giving
rules about how to live.
But we also know that thepeople of Israel failed
miserably.
At their best they did somethings, but at their worst it
was a travesty.
But the prophets never lostsight of God's promise and they
(25:30):
said hey, somebody's coming whowill put the world right.
And we know that story.
I took a class on the kingdom ofGod in college and I kept the
book.
It was written in 1953, and Iread it about a year ago again,
and I was impressed by one quotewhich the author said.
It's John Bright.
He says the Old and the NewTestament thus stand together as
(25:52):
the two acts of a single drama.
The Bible is one book.
Had we to give it a title, wemight with justice call it the
book of the coming kingdom ofGod.
That is indeed, indeed itscentral theme.
Everywhere In the New Testament,however, there is this
difference the kingdom of Godhas become also the kingdom of
Jesus, the Messiah, and thekingdom is actually at hand.
(26:16):
So then we have to ask whatdoes the kingdom look like?
What is this thing?
What is the kingdom?
And I'm impressed by Bob Moffatbecause he takes everything and
simplifies it very well, and healways goes back to this
teaching on prayer to thedisciples where he says if you
want to know what the kingdom is, it's his will being done on
(26:38):
earth as it is in heaven.
And I like Matthew 6.33, whereit also says Seek first the
kingdom of God and hisrighteousness, and all these
things will be added unto you,the righteousness.
There is the word sedeke and itbasically, if you look it up,
it says righteousness is the actof being righteous.
Well, thank you very much, butto dig deeper into righteousness
(27:00):
, it's to be aligned.
It's to be straight, it's to becorrect.
It's when a carpenter takes aplumb bob and hangs it by the
wall to see if the wall istilted or straight.
Or now we use laser levels tosee if the pictures are hung
right.
It's being aligned with God'sintentions.
At this point I was asking whatdoes the kingdom of God
(27:22):
actually look like?
And I like what Abraham Kuyperdid back in 1898 or whatever.
He looked at the world and hesaid there's three parts of life
that every religion speaks to,every philosophy speaks to.
And these were them.
(27:46):
One is what is ultimate reality?
In this case I already put theanswer down.
In the Christian religion it'sGod.
Who is man?
We understand Imago Dei, theindividual, who are others, who
are mankind, and then what's ourrelationship to creation?
He said that every philosophy,every religion answers questions
about those three areas, andthe answers you give give
(28:11):
completely different looks ofcultures and worlds.
It creates discernibledifference, and we know that
because ideas have consequences,ideas bear fruit, and we know
that because ideas haveconsequences, ideas bear fruit.
In our case I was looking.
Well, what is God's will foreach of these areas.
(28:32):
Imago Dei is in the middle, notbecause we're the center of the
universe.
I put it there in this diagrambecause God created us unique
individuals.
He knows our name, he knows thenumber of hairs on our heads.
He will judge us individuallyand we are the ones that he is
called to relate to himself, toothers and to creation.
(28:55):
So each one of us has a uniqueand individual responsibility
before God.
And try to get at this.
So what's our relationship toGod?
We can say, well, it's to loveGod, it's to fear God.
Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Fear of God is the beginning ofwisdom.
It says in Proverbs trust inthe Lord with all your heart,
(29:16):
all your mind.
Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
But for me, I think the wordworship really captures it.
The first three commands in theTen Commandments are about have
no other gods before me, don'tmake any other idols, don't take
my name in vain.
It's this idea that we lift Godup.
We are humble before God.
(29:38):
He is the ruler.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like people who arehumble before God, not because
we humble ourselves, but becausewe know who God is.
We can't create hummingbirds.
We can't even begin to createhummingbirds In terms of ourself
.
I like the word steward.
(29:58):
We're going to be called toaccount by God.
Our names will be written inthe Lamb's book of life and he
will open that book and he'lllook at each one of our lives
and say what have you done withit?
What did you do with your life?
I put you here, I put you onthis earth, what did you do?
How did you live?
And he calls us to steward.
We think of the five talents usto steward.
(30:21):
We think of the five talents Interms of our relationship to
others.
Ina will unpack this later inthe week.
I think the word love capturesit, not the affection, but the
attitude of love that we wouldseek the best God's intentions
for the other person.
What does the kingdom look like?
It looks like people lovingothers and then, of course,
creation.
We rule, and this covers a huge, huge territory.
(30:44):
If you think about creativityand work and play and sleep and
washing dishes and making yourbed and everything.
Well, I heard one guy saidwhat's the definition of
creation?
It's everything that is not God.
So if you think of rulingeverything that is not God,
(31:06):
except for other people, youcan't rule them.
But that's a lot of things torule over in every part of life.
So what is the kingdom?
What does it look like?
Luke Allen (31:18):
It's the way you answer these three questions.
Dwight Vogt (31:21):
Last one the kingdom of God is inseparable
from the role of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.
I will add one phrase to thisJeremy Treat this was his
definition the pastor, and Iwould suggest we say by God's
Spirit.
I love this verse.
(31:42):
We tend to think the Holy Spiritis a New Testament invention.
But throughout the OldTestament you see the work of
the Spirit of God, beginning inGenesis 1, where it hovered over
creation.
I like this one because Bezalel, of course, was the temple guy
in charge of the templecraftsmanship and filled with
the Spirit of God, with abilityand intelligence, with knowledge
of all craftsmanship, andfilled with spirit of God, with
ability and intelligence, withknowledge of all craftsmanship,
(32:03):
to devise artistic designs towork in gold, silver, bronze,
and cutting stones for settingand carving wood, to work in
every craft.
So here the spirit of God wasput on Basilel and gave him all
of these skills I love to dodo-it-yourself projects.
All of these skills I love todo do-it-yourself projects.
(32:23):
It's to my vein.
I think Scott just smiled at mebecause he knows that you know
how it is when you're going on atrip and everything starts
breaking in your house becauseyour wife's going to be alone.
Sure enough, the day before Iwas to leave, I was getting
packed.
All at once I sprung a leakright next to my water heater on
the main line that comes intomy house.
(32:44):
Well, one way to have dominionis to just call a plumber, which
is probably the smartest way tohave dominion.
Let the plumber have dominion,God's already gifted him.
But I think, well, why spendmoney on something I can do
myself?
And so, you know, I tackled it.
I looked, I think I can fixthis, and sure enough I got the
(33:05):
parts.
And I got some packs and ashark bit, kind of a easy fix.
Put it together, turn the wateron drip, drip, drip, drip, drip
.
I'm thinking I did it.
You know what's?
I can't leave a dripping waterline, you know, in my garage for
my wife.
So I took it like that Well,I'll just take it apart and see
if I did something wrong.
I took it all apart and itlooked fine.
And then and I often do this,but usually I pray beforehand,
(33:29):
but this time I didn't because Iwas in a hurry.
But I just go.
Spirit of God, give me wisdom.
I got to get this fixed, and tocall a plumber will take
another six to eight hours andit'll be late.
Lord, help me.
And so I call on this prayer,and so I put it back together
and I'm thinking, well, maybe Ijust need to push harder.
And I pushed, and sure enoughit clicked a little bit and I
(33:51):
thought, whoa, that wasdifferent.
Put it back together, turnedthe water on.
It didn't leak.
So anyway, it's a practicalHoly Spirit that he's given us.
If you're a leader, you need theSpirit of God.
We know that Joshua, son of Nun, was filled with the Spirit.
King Saul had two good days, Ifyou read 1 Samuel, and on those
(34:14):
two good days the Spirit of Godfilled him and he prophesied
and he defeated the Ammoniteswho were coming against him, and
then the people gave thanks toGod.
So his two good days werespirit-filled good days.
We know that David was filledwith the Spirit.
He said after he sinned pleasedon't take your Holy Spirit from
me, I can't live.
(34:37):
Daniel, for all of youadministrators, the Bible
doesn't say he was filled withthe Spirit of God.
It says that Nebuchadnezzarrecognized that he put Daniel in
charge and he had these dreamsand he said hey, I know that you
are able to interpret my dream,for the Spirit of the Holy God
is in you.
That's actually mentionedseveral times.
It's not just Nebuchadnezzar.
Darius, I think, or Cyrus, oneof those later leaders, said the
(35:00):
same thing.
And then Jesus he was prophesiedat Isaiah that the Spirit of
God would be upon him.
And then he, in Luke 4, opensthe scroll in the temple and
reads the Spirit of the Lord isupon me because he has anointed
me to proclaim good news to thepoor.
And he said Today thisscripture is fulfilled.
In your hearing, Jesus wasfully God and fully man.
(35:23):
He was tempted in all points,just like we are.
How did he do it, if he's fullyman?
And I believe it was because hewas fully possessed with the
Spirit.
He was conceived by the Spiritand the Spirit was on him.
We know this from his baptism,John 1.32.
(35:44):
Luke 4 1, full of the HolySpirit, returned from the Jordan
, was led by the Spirit into thewilderness.
Interesting that the Spirit ofGod actually led him into a very
difficult situation thewilderness where he was tempted.
Luke 4 14 and Jesus returned inpower, the Spirit, to Galilee.
We need the Spirit to livekingdom lives.
I think we know that, but weneed to be reminded of that.
(36:07):
Romans 7 is really powerful.
I mean, that's where Paul issaying I don't know why I do
what I do.
I have the desire to do what isright, but then I don't have
the ability to carry it out.
My will wants to do this, butmy flesh wants to do this.
And he goes on and on andfinally, in Romans, the next
(36:29):
chapter that he opens up withThanks be to God through Jesus
Christ, our Lord, for the law ofthe Spirit of life has set you
free, in Christ Jesus, from thelaw of sin and death.
He goes on to say do not getdrunk with wine, for that is
debauchery, but be filled withthe Spirit.
I think that's an interestingcontrast.
If you've ever seen a drunkperson, they're not in control
(36:51):
very much.
Jesus talked about our need forhim.
I am the vine, you are thebranches.
I am the tree, you are thebranches.
Whoever abides in me and I inhim, it is that bears much fruit
.
For apart from me, you can donothing.
I'd like to finish by justsharing a few verses from the
(37:11):
Old and New Testament, and I'lljust read through these.
Ezekiel 36, we have thispromise I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit inyou.
I will remove from you yourheart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh, and I will putmy spirit in you and move you.
And so is Paul's answer tofollow my decrees and be careful
(37:31):
to keep my laws.
The Spirit of God was going toenable people to obey to follow
Isaiah 44, for I will pour wateron the thirsty land and streams
on the dry ground.
To obey to follow Isaiah 44,for I will pour water on the
thirsty land and streams on thedry ground.
I will pour out my Spirit onyour offspring and my blessing
on your descendants.
I love this promise.
I have three adult children andtwo spouses that they married,
(37:56):
and this is my prayer for mykids that the Spirit would be
poured out on them.
It says this they will springup like grass in a meadow, like
poplar trees, by flowing streams.
I love the picture of trees andstreams.
If you know Psalms 1, it talksof who's the man who follows God
, who walks in the counsel ofthe ungodly.
(38:17):
He doesn't walk in the counselof the ungodly.
He's like a tree planted bystreams of water that bears
fruit in its season and its leafdoes not wither Again.
Jeremiah 17 says the same thing, and then we see in John 7, 37,
the fulfillment of that promise.
On the last day of the feast,the great day, jesus stood up
(38:39):
and cried out if anyone thirsts,let him come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me, as thescripture has said, out of his
heart will flow rivers of livingwater.
So we have the water feeding tothe trees, and now we have
water flowing from his heart.
Now, this he said about thespirit whom those who believed
(38:59):
in him were to receive, for asyet the Spirit had not been
given because Jesus was not yetglorified.
Of course, we know whathappened.
Jesus fulfilled the covenant byoffering his life as an
atonement, a perfect atonement,for our sin was taken and that
paid for our sins, so God couldrecognize us as his children and
(39:20):
actually give us his spirit.
And Jesus was exalted and puton the throne, and now he sits
with authority and power, andthat power is available to us
Ezekiel 47.
I'm going to paraphrase it.
I love this promise of thespirit he talks about.
It says Ezekiel's talking, hegoes, the man brought me back to
(39:41):
the entrance of the Spirit.
He talks about Ezekiel'stalking, he goes.
The man brought me back to theentrance of the temple and I saw
water coming out from under thethreshold, the doorway of the
temple, and it was flowingtoward the east.
Then he looked further and hesays and I saw that it was
coming from under the south sideof the temple, south of the
altar, and when I think south, Ithink global south and I go.
(40:02):
Does that mean the global southis where the outpouring of the
Spirit, you know, would be?
Anyway, that's going too far,probably, but it was coming from
the south.
And then he leads them outthrough the north gate.
So he goes north, and it's adry and barren land, probably,
and comes to the east gate andhe still see water flowing from
the south.
And then it says the man withthe measuring line in his hand
(40:25):
started measuring out a thousandcubits and the water was
flowing, it was ankle deep, andhe walks another thousand cubits
meters and it's up to his kneesand he walks another thousand
measures off, another thousandmeters and it's up to where His
waist.
Then he walks another thousandmeasures off, another thousand
meters and it's up to where Hiswaist.
Then he goes another thousandmeters and he says wait now it
(40:46):
was a river I could not crossbecause the water had risen and
was deep enough to swim in.
And then the man who wasleading him around said this,
son of man, ezekiel, do you seethis?
Do you see what's happening?
Then he takes him further andhe leads him up to the riverbank
and he says hey, look, he saw amultitude of trees growing on
(41:08):
both sides of the river.
Then he said you know, thiswater flows toward the east and
goes down into the Arab orsomething like that, rababa.
But where it empties into thegreat sea, it makes the salt
water fresh and there will beswarms of living creatures
wherever this water flows.
At one point he says where thewater flows, everything will
(41:32):
live.
And he says there's going to befishermen on the side of the
bank and they're going to bethrowing their nets.
And I think of Jesus tellingone of his apostles Peter, I
will make you fishers of men.
And then he says there's goingto be fish of every kind, fish
of all kinds, and I think of allthe nations, all the tribes,
all the tongues of the world.
(41:52):
And then he goes but I'm goingto leave some salt, I'm going to
leave the marshes and someswamps salty.
I'm not going to make themfresh.
There will always be swamps andmarshes.
Then he goes on and says allkinds of fruit trees will be
growing on the banks of thisriver Again, a picture of global
humanity.
(42:12):
And he says and their leaf willnot wither and their fruit will
not fail and they will bearfruit continuously because the
water of the sanctuary, thewater of the throne, is flowing
to them.
And then it says and theirfruit will be good for food and
their leaves for the healing ofthe nations.
This was the promise to Ezekiel.
(42:36):
Go to the last chapter of theBible and what do you see?
The angel showed me the riverof the water of life, as clear
as crystal, flowing from thethrone of God and of the Lamb,
down the middle of the greatstreet of the city.
And on each side of the riverstood the tree of life bearing
twelve crops of fruit, yieldingits fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree arefor the healing of the nations.
Here we have a picture of theSpirit of God flowing.
(42:59):
People have partaken of thetree of life.
They themselves have becometemples of the living God.
They become life-giving treesthemselves, like it refers to us
in Jeremiah 17 and Psalms 1.
And now our leaves are theleaves of the healing of the
nations, god's reign throughGod's people and God's place by
(43:22):
God's spirit.
The kingdom of God is a peoplereconciled to God, empowered by
the spirit of God to live inalignment with him in bringing
reconciliation to the worldaround them.
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.