What Jesus Says About His Plan for the
World
Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Matthew 26:64
In the gospels the theme, "The Kingdom of God," occurs well over a hundred times. It is not only the subject of the first address given by our Lord in the gospels, but it is the theme of His last message to the disciples. It is recorded that, after His resurrection from the dead, He spoke to them of things concerning the Kingdom of God.
The note is sounded all through His ministry. How many of His parables begin "...The Kingdom of God is like unto..." He sent His disciples out into the villages of Israel to proclaim "the Kingdom of God." Indeed, He teaches us that this is to be the goal, the main objective of life. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Mat. 6:33). He taught us thus to pray: "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy
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Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven..." It is the watchword of the gospel of Christ. It is the master thought of the Master Teacher.
But Jesus did more than point us to the Kingdom of God. He presented Himself as the King. Let us go back in our thinking to that occasion when crowds thronged the narrow streets of Jerusalem, excited and eager with anticipation. Soon they caught sight of a band of men pushing through the multitude, escorting a Figure riding upon a donkey. A tremendous shout of welcome reverberates through the narrow streets. It changes from a shout to a loud chant, a refrain which is caught up and repeated again and again by the people. "...Blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord...."
Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem, deliberately presenting Himself to the people as their Messiah, the rightful Ruler and Lord. So it is that Jesus Christ presents Himself to all people everywhere, in every age, as King and Lord of all. During the trial of Jesus, Pilate, the Roman governor, leaned forward in his chair, endeavoring to penetrate into the mind of the Man before him. "Art thou a king then?" The answer is forthright and definite. "Thou sayest that I am a king..." Or, as we would say, "You are entirely right. That is what I am."
The Sanhedrin, seeking to find some pretext to put Him to death, called upon Him to answer an oath, "Art thou the Messiah of God?" And our Lord again answers positively, "Thou sayest." That is right. "...Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mat. 26:64). He is a King not only on this terrestrial sphere, but He is the King of Glory over an eternal domain. This is the majestic claim of Jesus Christ. He placed within the hearts of His followers not only a fervent
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hope, but a burning conviction that at the end of time the high arches of glory would ring to the triumphant shout, "...The Kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." (Rev. 11:15).
According to the Bible, humanity is under a blight of rebellion against its Maker and rightful Lord. Humanity knows moral ruin because of a moral revolt against God. God is meant to be the Lord of life, but man has placed his own will in supremacy. We are a world that is running away from God, the sole and rightful Lord of all.
Hear the words which Lord Byron puts into the mouth of Satan, "He that does not bow the knee to God has already bowed to me." And this is the supreme tragedy of mankind.
In the early days of astronomy, the earth was conceived to be the center of the universe, and all the stars revolved around the earth. But the Ptolemaic system did not work. Then man discovered with Copernicus that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that the solar system revolved about the sun. Thus we are solar-centric and not geo-centric. When man proceeded upon that truth, he found that his problems worked out and the sums added up. If things do not add up to make sense today, whether we look on the world around us or experience within us, it is fundamentally because man has chosen to revolve around himself. He has put himself at the center and ignored the Son of Righteousness, who is the true Center of the orbit of our being. Jesus has come to restore a runaway race to its rightful Ruler. He purposes by the power of His redeeming love to break down the resistance of the human will, to capture our hearts and renew them by His
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Spirit, to swing us into God and His will, which is the true orbit of life.
Christ was not a pessimist. He did not fear that humanity would end in some monstrous tragedy. He did not think humanity's last chapter would be nothing but extinction and ruin. The end of time in the mind of Christ is the Throne of God, supreme over all creatures everywhere, the redeemed people of God renewed in glory serving Him in freedom and joy forever. To this glorious goal He gives Himself. For this, He touches our lives with His scepter and calls for our allegiance.
Let us consider briefly what Christ has to say about the nature of this Kingdom. He teaches that the Kingdom commences with the rule of God in the heart. The patriotic Israelite sought earnestly for a political kingdom, a national state. He hoped sometime, that the glory of the Davidic Kingdom would be restored. He looked for a king who, by the power of sword and scepter, would cast out the Roman oppressor and establish a Jewish domain. But the Kingdom of God, Jesus teaches, is not nationalistic but moral. It is brought to pass not by the power of men exerted from without, but by the new life of God growing from within. The real oppressor is not Caesar but Satan. The army to be feared and fought is not an army of evil which invades the sanctities of the soul. Moreover, God's Kingdom begins in the secret places within, an order of goodness, humility, and love.
Jesus is a different kind of King. He comes riding on the humble donkey. He takes the cross for His throne and rules by self-giving love. He has a different kind of kingdom and different kinds of subjects whose allegiance comes from within.
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I saw the conquerors riding byWith cruel lips and faces wan.
Musing the kingdoms sacked and burned.
Arose the Mongol, Genghis Khan.
And Alexander like a god
Who sought to weld this world in one,
And Caesar with his laurel wreath
And like a thing from hell, the Hun.
Then, all they perished from the earth
As fleeting shadows from a glass,
And conquering down the centuries
Came Christ, the swordless, on an ass.
The Conquerors — Harry Kemp
We have had enough of earthly kings. We have seen enough of the tyranny and oppression of temporal power. We need a King who reigns within the heart in righteousness and love.
Our Lord teaches that the rule of God in the world is spiritual and not material. Beginning at the center, He creates a new man with new allegiance and new motivation. This new man in turn exerts a new influence in the home, in society, and upon the world. Dr. Herman Melville Horn of New York University has this significant paragraph in his book, The Philosophy of Christian Education:
Social systems, ideal commonwealths have been given the world by many power reformers. Plato's Republic; Sir Thomas More's Utopia; Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and others. Perhaps we should include in this the volume of Karl Marx on Capital. Of all these Plato and
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Marx have been most influential. To most of them the words of Tennyson apply.Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be.
Now the paradox. Jesus, without a social system, has been more influential in reshaping society than these with a social system. The reason? Because He gives society a conscience which transforms society. Because He changes the lives of individuals and they in turn change the life of society. Because He provides the dynamic to change society. Because He begins with the means, the new man, and the new man leads to the end, the new society... and behold, the astonishing results of His method.
The Kingdom of God, Jesus taught, is social and not solitary. It begins with the new man redeemed through Jesus Christ. The new man is placed in a new society of redeemed people. There is now a new fellowship, the family of God, in which all, related to the one Father, are brothers and sisters. This is a new kind of organism — Christ's Body of which He is the Head, formed into a living thing by His Spirit. It is a new order of humanity, a redeemed society, the fellowship of God's people on earth.
Society today is desperately searching for community. It has been endeavoring to live without God and has found life empty and lonely. A little boy, running away from home, enjoys his new liberty when the day is bright, but, when the shadows lengthen, he knows an unutterable loneliness and longs to be home once again. So men are longing for their
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true home, but, apart from God, they have not been able to find it.
Napoleon said to his people, "Make the nation your home — La Patrie and its glory!" But his plan ended in bloodshed and disillusionment. Adolph Hitler shouted, "Let the bond be that of blood and race!" But that philosophy, too, ended in destruction. There are prophets today who say, "The true community of life is economic." But this dictatorship of soulless society will also fail and fall. There is only one communion that will ever give true fellowship. This is the Church of Jesus Christ, composed of those who have been humbled at the cross and made aware of their need, who are grateful for divine grace, rich in divine love, sharing a common Lord, a common life, and a common destiny.
Blest be the tie that binds,Our hearts in Christian love.
The Kingdom, Jesus teaches, is universal, not local. From the very beginning of His ministry, He talked in these terms. He said, "The field is the world...." "Ye are the salt of the earth...." "Ye are the light of the world." This expectation of a universal rule is one of the evidences of Jesus' deity. How does it happen that a man who began as a carpenter in an obscure village in a small province of the Roman Empire dared to envision, to labor and give Himself for a worldwide Kingdom? Jesus spoke of His reign being for all classes, all peoples, all races, all ages — a universal domain. His great commission directed His disciples to "every creature" and to "all nations." He would bind the world to the throne of God.
There has always been an attractive power in big things. Alexander the Great dreamed of an empire that would stretch
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from the Mediterranean to India, and he inspired his followers with fanatical zeal. Adolph Hitler conjured a super-race reigning a thousand years over all the peoples of earth, and young men arose by the millions to fight and die for that dream. Karl Marx, in his frustration, conceived a classless world society, and his demand of total dedication to the concept has grown into near realization in a third of the globe. One of the strong appeals of communism today is the vastness of its vision. It seeks to change the world.
Jesus Christ has a greater plan than this. No military genius, no power-drunk dictator, no dreaming idealist ever conceived as bold a plan or mapped as daring a campaign as the Man of Nazareth. He stood before His disciples, a handful of ordinary men from the common walks of life, arrayed against the hostile world and commanded, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway..."
Jesus shall reign where'er the sunDoth his successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
The Kingdom of our Lord is not only universal; it is total. There are no areas to which He does not lay claim. He does not divide things between the sacred and the secular, saying, "This is God's and this is man's; this is spiritual and this is material." Jesus draws a circle around the whole of life, touches it with His scepter, and says, "This is mine."
Some would have us believe that social questions are outside the province of religion. "Preach religion" they insist. "Stay out of the social issues and politics." But when Jesus
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Christ entered Jerusalem, He entered the heart of the national life, and He rode on the hard streets where the people lived. He came as King to the city and nation as well as Lord to the temple.
We of the Calvinist tradition love the phrase, "sovereignty of God." Its meaning is that God has a perfect will for all of life and that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Nothing is to be restricted from His reign. No one is to say to Christ, "This far you may come but no farther. This much you may have but no more." The Kingdom of God is total. The reign of Christ is to be complete. Let us be sure that every area of life and experience is surrendered to His rule, that we do not presume to set limits to His domain.
Though it has already begun, the Kingdom awaits a final consummation. It is both present and future; present in that wherever Christ is Lord, the Kingdom exists, and future in that it awaits a glorious day of consummation. "...Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." It was this specific claim of Jesus which caused the Sanhedrin to condemn Him. They arose in rage, rent their robes, and said, "He is guilty of death."
But He is coming again, and "...The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ..." (Rev. 11:15). "...at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord..." (Phil. 2:10, 11). "...He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law" (Isaiah 42:4).
He is coming again! What happened on the streets of Jerusalem — the palm branches and the glad shouts of wel-
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come — is just a faint foregleam of that which will break in upon the world of men when Christ the Lord shall return in power to reign.
We do not face the future with fear. We do not enter tomorrow in a cloud of uncertainty, even in this atomic age with all its terrors. The victory has already been won. He who overcame evil and conquered death by His resurrection and ascension will return, and His victory shall be complete.
Lead on, O King EternalWe follow, not with fears,
For gladness breaks like morning
Where'er Thy face appears.
Thy cross is lifted o'er us;
We journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest;
Lead on, O God of might!
It's thrilling to be Christ's! What an exultant note of joy sings in our hearts when we know that we move to final, complete, and glorious victory in that day of His revealing! Meanwhile, in its light we labor, and in its certainty we live.
But of all the glorious aspects of His Kingdom, most wonderful of all is that God rules in grace and infinite love. Napoleon at St. Helena turned to Count Montholan with the inquiry, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" The question was declined. Napoleon proceeded, "I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded great empires, but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love and to this very day, millions will die for Him."
Christ makes us citizens and servants of God by capturing
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our hearts. He binds us to Himself, not by the scourge of the whip, not with the blade of the sword, not with the chain of the captive, but by love. This King has come from glory, laid aside His robes of authority, and garbed Himself with human nature. He moved down to the low levels of our need and suffered with us and for us. He made the cruel reed His scepter and the crown of thorns His diadem; He chose the cross for His throne that He might win us by His love. When we have received His forgiveness — rebels that we are to the will of God — there comes an instant desire, a consuming passion to live for Him and to do His will.
It is right that we should give ourselves to Him. He alone is worthy. He alone is good enough and kind enough to rule the human will. He has purchased our lives by the giving of His own. When we surrender to Christ the King and trust Him, we enter the realm of God and experience His gracious rule.
I remember having lunch with a young man some years ago. He was an instructor at the University of California, studying for his doctorate. As we sat in the Faculty Club and talked over some personal problems, he said to me with an air of wistfulness, "I was reared in a Christian home, but the Christian faith has become unreal to me. God is not much more than a philosophical concept." We talked further and I asked, "Why don't you venture this? If you feel that Jesus Christ is the highest and best you know in life, if you sense that God has done a redeeming work for you and that His love reaches you, why don't you authorize Christ to come into your life as King? Why don't you open every door and surrender yourself to Him?" By this time, the others had gone, and we were almost alone. With moist eyes, he bowed his head at the lun-
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cheon table and simply said, "Christ, I open the doors to You. Too long I have kept You, my King, outside. Come into my heart. Redeem it from its selfishness and sin. Remove its fears and its conflicts. Reign forever as my rightful Lord."
The following week several young people from his class came to me with bright faces, saying, "We spent an hour with our instructor today and he spent the whole time telling us what Jesus Christ means to him. He told us that Christ is a real Lord and He has a real Kingdom."
So Christ is at the gates today. Men, women, and young people, behold your King! Open wide the gates and let Him reign. The Kingdom of God becomes real when we acknowledge its King.
