Your Kingdom Come

                         
Rudyard Methodist Church Harvest Service 30^th September 2018

Deuteronomy 28: 1-14 and Matthew 5.1-16

The Book of Deuteronomy (meaning second law) picks up the story of the People of God and begins by rehearsing their story. Their release from slavery in Egypt, not entering into the Promised Land because of fear, forty years of desert wanderings and then finally moving into the land of Canaan.

And we then begin to move into a whole vast array of teaching about how to live as a People in a Covenant relationship with God.

And as with all covenants, there are certain terms and conditions that are laid out.

In these early passages Moses presents the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as a fundamental precis of the covenant.

And then we arrive at the passage we heard from Deuteronomy chapter 28.

There are pages and pages of stuff to do and stuff not to do, and people they can have contact with and people to avoid, things to eat and things not to eat, and so on and so forth.

And then we read…

If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.

Then we get a list of blessings that will follow this faithfulness.

So, let me ask you this question…

Are material blessings a sign that God’s favour rests upon us and that we are walking in God’s will and ways?

Or, who believes that material blessings are a sign of our own labour, or good fortune and nothing at all to how we live in God’s sight? 

Or maybe many of us are simply not sure, confused or don’t really care?  

As the millenniums slip by these questions became touchstones about how authentic Israelite's should live.

By the time we get to the 1^st century we have a self-selecting group of Jews who refer to themselves as Pharisee’s.  From our Gospels and other sources we learn that for the most part they were wealthy.

Let’s not forget at this time society was deeply stratified and there were broadly only two types of people, the rich and the poor.

Do you remember the parable Jesus told about Lazarus and the rich man and on death the rich person descends to hell and the poor man, Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s bosom. 

In the story there was a great divide which no one could cross.

So it was that there was a great divide between the rich and poor, the have and the have not's.

And the Pharisee’s were definitely for the most part, the haves. 

If you know very little else about the Pharisee’s you will also know that they were passionate about the Letter of the Law.

Every jot and tittle has to be accounted for – and a jot and tittle are very small marks that often come at the end of a sentence.

So, there they are, studying their Scriptures and what do they read in passage like the one we heard from Deuteronomy.

They read that, If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefullcome y all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.

Now follow that logically and what conclusions might be drawn?

Exactly the ones we find Jesus challenging them about time after time.

Wouldn’t it be logical to suppose that if God blesses those who are obedient, those who keep every jot and tittle of the law, and they are thus blessed, wouldn’t the opposite hold true.

That those who are poor, homeless, suffering, apparently not being blessed in any shape or form, then does it not follow that they are in such a situation because they have not obeyed God’s law, and have not carefully kept every jot and tittle of the law.

They had only themselves to blame for their condition.

Carry that perspective into the Gospel and you will see it played out time and time again.

John 9.1

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Now let us carry this over and have a look at the Beatitudes, (coming from the Latin word for blessed, beatus)

Remember the story of the Israelite's coming out of slavery in Egypt, their desert wanderings, their entry into the Holy Land and the giving of the Law by Moses.

And their continuing journey to live in a covenantal relationship with God which they managed variously.

Remember that Matthew is the most Jewish of the Gospels and that Matthew always has significant events and teachings taking place on a mountain.

And so we have Jesus coming to be baptized by John and crossing over from the east side to the west side of the Jordan, just as Joshua had done many years before.

Also Jesus had his own desert wandering.

Then coming out of the desert he began to proclaim…

‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’

And repent means far more than a feeling of remorse, it is turning 180 degrees and walking in the other direction.

And let me also remind you that when in Matthew we see the phrase, kingdom of heaven, this is out of respect for the name of God, and so we can, as we see in other Gospel, read this as the Kingdom of God. 

Heaven is God’s realm and so Matthew uses the one to mean the other out of respect to his readers.

And now Jesus goes up a mountain, like Moses and offers the kind of teaching that would be dynamite and would blow apart all that the Pharisee’s had come to hold as sacred and inviolable truths.

Jesus ushers in the Kingdom of Heaven, and later on will give in this ‘Sermon on the Mount’, what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer.

This Prayer reminds us that our destiny, our hope and our prayer is not to embark to some far distant heavenly realm to live with God for ever.

Our true destiny is to see heaven, God’s realm, and earth, our realm, conjoined, wonderfully spoken of in Revelation as a great marriage feast.

Jesus also blows apart all the wrong headed thinking and understanding of just who might be recipients of God favour and blessings.

Jesus blows apart any idea that having material wealth and possessions means that God has blessed you.

This is a New Covenant, this is a New Testament.

This is how the world is supposed to operate.

If we find ourselves blessed then we in our turn seek to bless others. 

For example FCN is helping out with Forage Aid. 

Should a farmer find they are short on fodder and haven't the means to get more they can apply for aid. If they are accepted another farmer offers something of their excess and offers it to the farmer who is short on supplies. Recipient and donor do no know each other, it is all done through Forage Aid. www.forageaid.org.uk

This radical teaching sent shock waves through the ancient world of clear demarcations, clear boundaries between classes and between rich and poor.

Galatians 3.27-29 encapsulates this radical Gospel very well…

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.…

It turned things on their head and ushered in the Age to Come into the present, the now and not yet of the Kingdom of God.

A time when heaven and earth will be conjoined in the great marriage feast I mentioned earlier, a time for which we pray and for we which we work.

And it is this radical inclusivity, this outrageous love of God…

 ‘…for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whosoever believes in him should not die but have everlasting life.

…it is this Kingdom work to which FCN volunteers respond.

They see in the beatitudes that God has no favourites, no special people and that he does not pour his material blessings particularly down upon those who seek to scrupulously follow his law regarding every jot and tittle.

The Farming Community Network is a Christian faith based national charity that was established over twenty years ago.

Through a network of over 400 volunteers the FCN offers a listening ear, a compassionate heart and wiling feet to walk alongside farmers and farming families at times of difficulty or stress.

That might be concerns over finance, stress, mental health, succession issues or animal welfare. Currently Brexit and the ongoing effects of the drought are causing anxiety and for others HS2.

This Kingdom work is one of reconciliation, of redemption and of restoration founded upon the completed work of Jesus.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, (Jesus) and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." (Colossians 1:15–20)

And wonder of wonders, God invites you and he invites me to participate in His ever unfolding plan of reconciliation. To bring about the redemption of the whole cosmos so that earth begins to reflect more of the coming Kingdom, a foretaste of that time when as John puts in the Book of Revelation…

I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 

Meanwhile – we have a job of work to do…

When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

God wants to help those, who mourn, God wants to help the meek, and God wants to help those who suffer for speaking out about injustice.

And God wants to help farmers and their families struggling with debt or with mental health issues, or succession disputes, or forage issues as they may well be doing in the coming months. 

And you and I are the boots on the ground. God’s hands reaching out and His feet walking alongside someone in need, practically demonstrating God’s heart of compassion and love.

Because this is a sign of the Kingdom of God come upon earth, a realized Lord’s Prayer.

We are God ambassadors, his agents of peace and reconciliation, purveyors of hope as we sing out across the land in confidence…

God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year:

God is working his purpose out,  and the time is drawing near:
nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be,

when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God,
as the waters cover the sea.  

Are you ready to go to work for the Lord!