EPISODE 39 Luke Chapter 17 ”Kingdom Of God, Phases 1 & 2” for Share The Word

Welcome to Share the Word, your way through the New Testament one chapter at a time. We love hearing from you, and we'd like to share some of those messages, whether you're tuning in in the morning, afternoon, or just before bed, no matter how or when. We praise God that you're here with us and that you're listening to His Word. So, let's get started and tune in to today's lesson and go a little deeper. Kingdom of God, phases one and two, Luke 17. Hi, and welcome back to Share the Word.

If you're just jumping in, we've been systematically working our way through the New Testament of the Bible. Today we're at Luke chapter 17. If you'd like to catch up, by the way, all the previous episodes are available at our website's archive, www.sharetheword.org. If you stick with us, you're going to hear the biggest ideas explained in every chapter of the New Testament. Keep in mind, we can't comment on everything that comes up in every chapter in 20 minutes, but over the course of this study, because the important ideas keep popping up over and over, we'll certainly cover all of them eventually because the New Testament writers keep bringing up the same ideas that they felt were important. Make sense?

So today we are at chapter 17 in the middle of the Gospel of Luke. I don't want to take anything for granted because I realize our listeners will have varying degrees of familiarity with the Bible. You might wonder why Share the Word is focused on what we call the New Testament. Luke is one of the Gospels in the New Testament, which means one of the writings about Jesus' life. Maybe you're confused about the whole concept of Old versus New Testament, so let me address that for a couple of moments because it provides actually good background for today's lesson. The writings of the Old Testament, the 39 writings we call the Old Testament, were settled Word of God in Jesus' time.

When Jesus talked about the Scriptures or used the formula, It is written, and then quoted from something, he was appealing to the authority of the 39 writings from Genesis to Malachi that we now call the Old Testament. The Old Testament tells, at its outset, about how everything is that came into existence, how human beings were created in God's image. That means, in many ways, like Him. Then it talks about how sin entered into our world and messed up everything that was a paradise before that. Because God created us with free will, that is the ability to think for ourselves and make moral choices, baked into the cake from the outset, you might say, was the reality that human beings, the pinnacle of God's creation, could rebel against Him and opt to live lives apart from Him.

So the Old Testament shows us, example after example, of how that happened, with people using their free will to do just that, rebel against God. But also, in contrast, others who believed and were faithful to God's ways and followed Him. God started to reveal in the Old Testament His plan to do something about sin which has come between us and God. The plan started taking shape when He chose one family of people from the earth through whom He would reveal Himself, and through whom one day He promised He would bring a Savior into the world who would make a way to remedy our sin problem and reconnect us with Him. It was the family of a man named Abraham, way back in the book of Genesis. God made a covenant with Abraham, an irrevocable covenant, one unable to be changed.

And it was with Abraham and his descendants following him. They were sovereignly chosen by God, and He had special plans to work out through them. Much of the Old Testament is specifically focused on what God did in and through those people, Abraham's family that grew into a nation that we call the nation of Israel or the Jewish people. Several of the writings of the Old Testament show their historical development. Others are filled with detailed regulations and descriptions of how God wanted those people to live differently than the other nations of the world, to be a light to the rest of the world, to show people what He was like. Great heroes emerged in Israel, great women and men of faith throughout the history of that country.

But it's fair to say, as a whole, they did not live up to their calling to be that light to point people in the world to God, that example of what God wants them to be, to show the world what He is like. Over centuries of time, Israel grew less and less faithful and more and more rebellious. There were always exceptions, of course, but the nation as a whole, I mean, decisively turned away from God, even though He sent prophet after prophet and patiently warned them for centuries, actually. He told them that if they did not repent and return to Him and honor their covenant with Him, that they would be overrun by larger world powers and would cease to exist as an independent nation. Realize, however, those same prophets promised that God would never forget His covenant because, remember, it was irrevocable. He made it with Abraham at the beginning.

There were certain promises in it that He said He would definitely keep. One of them was He would send a deliverer to restore their fortunes and lead them back into a right relationship with Himself. The prophet said this deliverer would be a direct descendant of Israel's greatest king, historically, King David, and so he came to be referred to as the Son of David. Or another title, the Messiah, which means the Anointed One. Let's take a breath for a moment. I just gave you like a 10,000-foot bird's-eye overview of the Old Testament, which contains 39 inspired writings broken down into 929 chapters.

That may have been the shortest summary in history, by the way. But I did it because it's really hard to understand what's going on in the Gospels with Jesus and the things that happened in his lifetime unless you have some kind of an understanding of what went before him. Keep in mind, though, that the Old Testament is focused on Israel, their origins, their government and laws, their worship, their rise from early heroes like Abraham and Moses and David to the dark days of unfaithfulness to God and the eventual downfall. What the prophets warned would happen began to happen in the 8th century before Christ, as their ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah were attacked and overrun successively by the Assyrian and then the Babylonian empires, and Israel did cease to exist as a nation on the earth.

The bulk of the Jewish people were physically driven out of their homeland and dispersed among other nations, the diaspora as it's called. We speak to this day about the lost tribes of Israel, while a small remnant of Jews did return to the land of Israel about 400 years before Jesus' time, and a society of Jews again occupied some of their ancient land in Jesus' day, most of the Jewish people did not return. They were living in places as far away as Europe and Africa and India and Russia. And even the society that grew from the remnant that returned, those living in the land during Jesus' time, were never an independent nation. They were a small occupied country under the control of the powerful Roman Empire. But this fact is critically important to understand.

Most of the Jewish people in the first century fervently believed the prophets and fully expected God would one day send to them that Son of David, that Messiah, who would in fact free them from their oppressions and establish them as a great nation on earth. They longed for this deliverer to arise and take charge as God's king. This was the kingdom of God as they understood it. Now, if you knew all that, I apologize. Or if you're someone who just hates history, I apologize, sort of, kind of. Because if you don't understand something about the history of the Jewish people, the Old Testament covenants God made with them, and don't understand about their expectations for a Messiah, then you really won't get the dynamics that play out during the public ministry years of Jesus.

You won't get why he was so controversial, why he produced so much excitement on the one hand and determined opposition on the other, and why he, from a human point of view anyway, ended up on a cross outside Jerusalem about 33 A.D. And I really want you to get all that. It's the key that unlocks the drama and interwoven themes in the Gospels regarding Jesus of Nazareth. So this leads me to the verses and to the big idea in Luke chapter 17 that I want to focus on with you today about time, right? They start at verse 20, where Luke writes this. Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The kingdom of God is not something that can be observed when people will say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Then he said to his disciples, The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘There he is,’ or ‘Here he is.’ Don’t go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning which flashes from the sky from one end to the other. But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. The Son of Man, remember, is a title Jesus used for himself.

He’s talking about himself. So when the Jewish leaders, the religious leaders here, the Pharisees, asked Jesus about the kingdom of God and when it would come, they absolutely meant the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth by the Son of David, the Messiah, a political kingdom. They absolutely meant, When will our oppressors be put down and the promised kingdom age come? They expected when the Messiah appeared, all that would happen pretty quickly. He would powerfully move to establish the literal kingdom of God on earth. I’m not sure if whoever asked this question of Jesus that day did so kind of mockingly, since the Pharisees really didn’t believe in him, or if it was someone who among them was sincere enough to want to hear Jesus’ opinion on this most important question to the Jews.

It certainly wasn’t a surprising question. Realize when the prophet John the Baptist had appeared on the scene a couple years earlier, his message was, Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. And Jesus also echoed that in his public preaching. When John and Jesus challenged people to repent, that had to do with a heart change. Get your hearts right with God and prepare for his coming kingdom. That, they said, the kingdom of God was at hand sounds to me like near, close.

So it's not at all surprising that since this was part of their public message to Israel, taken together with the miraculous things people saw Jesus do, many were hoping this meant he was the Messiah and that he would shortly move to fulfill centuries of Jewish expectations and inaugurate the real physical kingdom of God, becoming the King of Israel. Jesus' answer to the Pharisees' question on this point on this day would be very telling. What exactly did he say? When they asked him, Is the kingdom of God going to arrive soon? how did he respond? Well, Jesus said that they should not be looking for some outward dramatic sign from him, like a move towards seizing power in Israel, for example, something that everybody would see and say, Here it is, finally it's happening.

No, Jesus told them, the kingdom of God is already in your midst. What? What did that mean? This was true in the sense that Jesus, who in fact is the Messiah, the King, was right then in their midst. Some commentators believe the sense of Jesus' answer was, The kingdom of God is within your reach. It's close, because he was right there among them, and he in fact was the promised Messiah.

But neither the Pharisees nor the other leaders in Israel accepted him, as we've seen over and over in the Gospel of John and now in Luke's account. Not only because Jesus was often very critical of them and their influence on that society, although I'm sure that played a personal role in it, but even more so because Jesus made no moves expected of the Messiah at all during his public ministry years. No political moves. No striking out against the Romans, for example. No even speaking out against their oppressors. These things were the very essence of what the Messiah should do, according to the popular expectations.

But Jesus seemed completely apolitical, turned away from the suggestions that he should be doing anything like being a political king. He wouldn't even be badgered into denouncing the Roman occupation when people pushed him to do that. So he just did not fit the mold of what's commonly expected of the Messiah. When Jesus said, The kingdom of God is actually in your midst, I think he meant that in the same sense as before when he taught about the kingdom of God in parables. Remember, he'd said, It's like a tiny mustard seed that got planted in a garden and then grew and grew and grew, or like a little bit of yeast that would mix in with flour dough, ferment it, expand and expand. Jesus had come to initiate the kingdom of God, all right, but at this stage it was to be a spiritual kingdom, we would say, an invisible kingdom.

It was a kingdom that was about winning people's hearts to him. Wait, so was Jesus the Messiah or not, Paul? He absolutely was. He fulfilled far too many precise prophecies not to be. And he did things the prophets said only the Messiah would be able to do. What was off was the Pharisees' and others' expectations of what the Messiah would do and when he would do it.

Because Jesus didn't do all that they expected, when they expected he should, and undoubtedly also because he was very critical of them personally, as we've pointed out, the religious leaders completely rejected him. They decided he was a spiritual deceiver or some kind of magician. Could not possibly be the true Messiah. To this day, this is the Orthodox Jewish position. I just read an article this week in Wikipedia on this very question, which said, in part, The rejection of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah has never been a theological issue in Judaism, because Jewish eschatology holds that the coming of the Jewish Messiah will be associated with events that just did not occur at the time of Jesus. Historically, some Jewish writers and scholars have considered Jesus the most damaging false prophet.

Eschatology means the study of end times. So what that article was saying is Orthodox Jews, of which the Pharisees were the first century version, believe that the Messiah will suddenly come and bring about certain things that have to do with political power rising to influence in Israel, overcoming their enemies. He will be a military political ruler, and he will establish Israel again as an important nation on the earth. And he will rule, actually, as a ruler from Jerusalem in a new age. Kingdom of God is what they called it. The article is saying because Jesus did not do any of that in the first century, most religious Jews then and now have ruled him out as possibly being their Messiah, with many believing he had to have been then a false prophet or some kind of deceiver.

All of this should help you understand the growing tension and animosity between Jesus and the religious leaders of his nation that's so obvious in the Gospels. Even Jesus' own followers, confused by this contradiction apparently, they believed in him. They believed he was the anointed one, the Messiah, but he sure didn't act like it. He didn't act like the way they were taught to expect. And that puzzled them, to say the least. The next several verses here in Luke 17, beginning at verse 22, shed some light on that.

Notice this part of our chapter was not spoken to the Pharisees or to the public, but to Jesus' own disciples. What he tells his disciples, as away from the other people, that he is going away and that he will one day return. He's clear with them at verse 25 that he would first suffer many things and be rejected by their generation. By their generation. They would not be the generation to see the fulfillment of the Jewish messianic expectations. Their generation would not be seeing him set up an earthly kingdom of God.

No, Jesus told them. In fact, what they would see was him rejected and suffering. This is very important to get. It wasn't until after the final rejection of Jesus by the rulers of his nation, it wasn't until after he was crucified, after his incredible resurrection from the dead, that it started to become clear to his followers that although Jesus was certainly the Son of David, the promised Messiah told about in the Old Testament prophecies, his coming in their generation, as we now call it the first century, was never going to be about setting up a political kingdom in Israel. They came to realize the purpose for which he came then was to suffer and die as an atonement for sin, to do what was necessary to save all of us, not just Israel, but all of us, for something a lot worse than Roman occupation, to save us from sin and death and judgment.

He came then to begin a movement, a kingdom, if you will, a spiritual kingdom, one where he would rule as king in people's hearts and minds who decided to believe in him and follow him. And that spiritual kingdom that began to grow in the first century continues to grow, almost like a parallel universe, as people hear the gospel and respond to it in faith. That's what's been happening ever since the first century. People from all over the earth hear the gospel, embrace Jesus as their Savior and their leader, and join in the spiritual kingdom of God. The early Christians came to realize this was God's plan for our time.

They also came to understand, therefore, and this is what Christians who believe the Bible seriously still believe, there must then be two comings of the Messiah, phase one and phase two, we might say, and two manifestations of the kingdom of God: a spiritual manifestation of the kingdom of God that's going on through the centuries, but one day also a future, literal, political kingdom of God. When he comes back, after he returns from heaven to the earth to bring in a new age and a new era, when he will literally be the King. He came the first time to suffer for sin and to become our Savior, to initiate the spiritual kingdom of God. But another coming is ahead of us when Jesus will dramatically return from heaven. The book of Revelation describes this like a conquering King. He will become Israel's deliverer, and he will inaugurate a physical kingdom of God on this planet.

There will be a period of healing and righteousness wash over this sin-sick planet. Christians refer to that as the second coming of Christ. We'll learn much more about that in passages in the New Testament as we continue. You know, as we see Israel today, right now, surrounded by threatening fanatical enemies, it's not very hard to imagine the second coming of Christ, which will be largely to rescue Israel from annihilation. According to their own prophet, Zechariah, the people of Israel will on that day, when Jesus reappears, look on the one who they pierced and mourn. That generation of Jewish people alive at Jesus' second coming will realize the one that their nation rejected so long ago at his first coming was indeed their Messiah and Savior.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 11 on this very subject: on that day, that is when Jesus returns again, all Israel will be saved. The chosen people will finally recognize and embrace Jesus for who he really was, both their Messiah and their Savior. I hope I haven't blown your mind today with too much information. What I hope instead is that I've expanded your understanding about the kingdom of God and how that term is used in the New Testament, how it was interpreted by the Jewish leaders in the first century, along with their messianic expectations that were so prevalent then, how this all played into the dynamics of Jesus' public ministry. It explains a lot when you understand it.

It explains, for one big thing, the reaction, the animosity on the part of the powerful factions in Israel toward Jesus that climaxed in 33 A.D. when he was arrested, convicted of blasphemy by those who decided he was a fake Messiah, and finally crucified on the order of a Roman governor who just desperately wanted to keep the peace in unruly Jerusalem. We're moving toward that climax in the Gospel of Luke. Stay with us on Share the Word. Thanks for listening. We hope you found this commentary both interesting and insightful. Keep in mind that Share the Word releases two new podcasts weekly at 9 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.