Tag: reign of God

The Reign of God has Drawn Near to You

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Biblical Text: Matthew 3:1-12
Full Sermon Draft

I attempted something in this sermon through a couple of methods that I think most people would say don’t. John the Baptist is an enigmatic figure. He was a huge deal to those in Jesus’ time. The whole “there is not one greater born of woman” phrase that Jesus employs. John had disciples that lasted long in to the first century. The apostles in Acts run into them as “ones who’ve had the baptism of John” but didn’t know about Jesus. Even in secular literature John gets more time. Josephus records the extent of the Baptist’s following which was enough to cause Herod to come after him. But in our day and for most of Christian history John is just an almost forgotten per-cursor. He would have liked that. “He must become greater, I must become less.” But preaching from John to me has renewed vitality. My intention was to create the picture of how we and those people streaming out to John are very close, probably closer than we have been for at least 500 years if not 2000. Want to hear more of that take a listen.

The pay-off is that the proclamation of John can be the direct proclamation to the people of God today. Not that it couldn’t have been 50 or 100 years ago, but I think, if I was successful with the first part, then the second part becomes one of those “ah-ha” type experiences. That is what was so powerful, combined with oh, and it applies to me in some very specific way.

So, my guess is this either “works” or you wonder what the heck I’m talking about. Either I was successful in casting “in those days” over today, or the proclamation falls on deaf ears.

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The Reign of God comes… – Mark 4:26-34

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Full Text

Test for this sermon was Mark 4:26-34, a pair of parables about seeds.

This is an exerpt…
The Reign of God comes as an offense to the ways of the world. It comes small, when the world likes its rulers to come in pomp and circumstance. The reign of God grows silently and where God wants it, when the world likes things known and planned and controlled. The reign of God grows like a shrub, the mustard, something organic, where the world prefers things mechanical and controlled. That plant grows untended, where the world wants its order. And most offensively, the reign of God invites all the birds into the garden, where the world wants to keep the garden for a special and chosen few. The world cannot stop the reign of God. It has and will continue to grow large. The reign of God will mature and reach a harvest, a judgement. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. But in that harvest, some will have chosen to weed their garden. The offense of how the reign of God presents itself – in a crucified savior, in a factious and often hypocritical church, in the foolishness of preaching and the mysticism of sacraments – those offenses to the world will cause some to dig out that mustard seed. They will reject the reign of God for that of the world – a world that is even now passing away.