when he's like, I've given you all the hints I can do to let you know what's gonna happen. Why are you surprised that he got crucified and resurrected? You know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. So kingdom of God, again, another super easy topic to cover real quick. But that's all one of the glory cycle, because I think it helps us because more than anything, it puts us into the mix. You know, like God is doing something among us people. It's not just God is doing something. And I'm useless, have no part of it not in the story. You know, like, no, it's like God is anyway. He went into Galle proclaim the gospel of God mark one again, the kingdom of God is near what in the world? Was he talking about? With the kingdom of God? We could do 15 weeks on a kingdom of God study. We're not going to do that. You get 10 minutes, right. So I've got more information than you could possibly want. Yeah, time. Scot McKnight and another book that I did not bring, but it is in my office called Kingdom conspiracy. He has looked at every reference to the kingdom of God, throughout the entire New Testament, all other Jewish literature, Josephus, extrabiblical, Old Testament Septuagint all of this and said, Okay, what is the kingdom of God? He said, It has five components. I included these in a sermon once that I preached here. The first is God, as the kingdom of God has to have a king. God, the Lord of the kingdom, this is the kingdom of God. Now, Missionary Baptist backgrounds Don't hate me but the kingdom of God is the same as the kingdom of heaven. Rhonda can correct me later, after class. But the kingdom that was Matthew's way of of an even the Bible project is translating it kingdom of the skies, you know, but so it's basically I don't know what my why Matthew kind of tried to do that. But Dave Johnston kingdom of God is the same as kingdom of heaven. But it's God's kingdom. He is the king. Rhonda agrees with that. So he's the king. Let's just go with that. God's not King Rhonda. We might have to have some talking later. But yeah, yes. So so number two component. That's Yes. Yeah. There has to be a rule. There is a governing of the kingdom. There's if this is what we understand. That includes redemption, lordship of the kingdom, there's a rule. So there's, well, we'll get to this later, but there's, there's definitely the king is redeeming. He's the redeeming king. He's a saving king. He's a redemption, atonement, the kingdom of God. There was always this. Hope there's something good there's good news in it, right? There's always a people in the kingdom. A church Church people, us, we are there, the kingdom of God, God and Clute you have you can't have a kingdom. You don't have people, you know, open the doors. Here's the people, you know, like, there's no, there's no empty kingdom. You know. And I think that's important. We always think, oh kingdom of God kingdom or the skies King or the heavens, that's all light, you know, it's it's us, we are very much included with this. There's a people involved, I would say this is the church, I don't think and that you can be a part of the kingdom and not a part of a church. Right. And that's a controversial statement. People think Kingdom work is outside of the church, it's not Kingdom work is in the church walls, and outside of the church walls. So I'll be controversial for there is a way of life, there's an ethic. There's a way that we're supposed to live in the kingdom, we get this through instructions through teachings, life in the Spirit, we have to be told how to live in the kingdom, there's a way of living a way of life. Ethics is kind of what this includes, you know, this is like, I know who I am, therefore, I'm I need to know how I'm supposed to be living. So a lot of the teachings are designed to help us to live as God's people, like think the 10 commandments, but for us, right? Number 5/5 component there in the kingdom, there's always territory, a land, land flowing with milk and honey, the promised land a place Jerusalem, Mount Zion like it's it's always got territory. It's a sacred place. There's always something special about what happened here, or what's going to happen here. I've got to have a territory. Now. Controversially, in the New Testament, this is developed by anywhere that God's people take up residence. So that's my controversy. We're trying to think all this stuff's gonna happen over in Israel. And we're like, oh, you know, Israel killed millions of people, that's okay. It's God stuff, like, or God's Kingdom is very much where your house is. And it's where your church is. And it's it, you know, it's, it's where you're at. That's the territory, that's the land, it's where you're walking around with your, you know, your glory cycle, you know, anywhere you take God's presence with you. That's holy, right. So that's the five components that the Kingdom has to have, and also fleshed out to the New Testament. So, so notice, there's a visibility here, there's a now there's a present. There's a God's presence, there's a rule and authority. There's activity, God's working, there's a time and space, there's a perfect will of God. There's a society, a community of people of God, and those of us that are following Jesus have entered into the Kingdom as His people. There's participation in the kingdom among his people. We're doing stuff we are doing Kingdom work. We're linking up with what God's wanting to do as His people. And we're participating with him. We're, like I said, we are continuing the ministry of Christ. If you read Corinthians, We have things to do when we celebrate the Lord's Supper. We're remembering and participating into the story of what God's doing is demonstrated by Jesus. We're looking forward to a kingdom banquet. Later. Every single time we take communion. Now, we're linking ourselves with what happened in Passover. We're linking ourselves what's going to happen later in this kingdom Messianic banquet, we're entering with childlike faith, with obedience. We're under his rule, and under his authority, reading the Gospel and hearing his teaching, gives us a picture of what this kingdom life looks like. So that's why we have all these parables. He's trying to help us understand what the kingdom life looks like. You bust out the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and it strikes us like what what these are not who are supposed to be in the kingdom. These are not the important people. These are not the the folks that have the power and the authority these are the nobodies Blessed are the poor in spirit. And I think these are there is a spiritual component to that of a humbleness and a childlike faith but I think it's also the there's the if you walk away from the beatitudes in the sermon and you were important person in society, your face is dropping, like the rich young ruler, right? Because at some point, we have to value the things of the kingdom. So All right, next page. KINGDOM OF GOD page kingdom of God, maybe page jawed, maybe page five. This is the traditional understanding the kingdom of God was kind of getting to this with this when we think of revelation in the future. Well, this is based somewhat on the Jewish understanding of these old age and the new age to come. The first coming of Christ started the new age, this age to come. But the old age has not ended and is not going to end until Jesus comes back. Okay, so you noticed on your picture there, there's an overlap of these ages. Okay. So the first age, and I my fonts kind of small, but this age that's known as sin and rebellion and suffering, and Satan is ruling. There's disease and death and darkness and spiritual battles. There's a flesh controlling us, there's limits, there's power hungry people, and it's all about the money, you know, the kingdom of this world. Babylon is, is in charge to pull in some revelation there. This is what this that old age looked like. And it hasn't completely ended yet, we still have sin. We still have people that are power hungry, we still have oppression, and we still have issues. But the Second Age, the eighth, the kingdom of God that has begun. This is eternal life. It's characterized by humility and freedom and the glory of God, there's comfort and safety, there's no more evil, there's no suffering, we are completely made whole. We are righteous and justified. There's no death, we're completely and fully in the presence of God.