Kingdom First - Week 1 “No King but Jesus”

So according to Jesus, we are to seek first the kingdom of God. But what's the kingdom of God? How can you seek it first when you aren't quite sure what it is? And why would he say seek first the kingdom above and beyond these things that he mentions in the text, which are food, clothing, and life's necessities? Why would we put the kingdom, seeking the kingdom, ahead of our own necessities? [00:00:58] (24 seconds)  #SeekFirstTheKingdom

What is the kingdom of God? Is the kingdom of God like a social justice movement that that that has to be advanced through our political engagement? And if you don't do your part, it won't get done. Is that the kingdom of God? Or is the kingdom of God like some personal spiritual experience that we should all be seeking? What is the kingdom of God? [00:05:12] (21 seconds)  #WhatIsGodsKingdom

Wherever Jesus is king, God's blessing reigns. Listen, you want God's blessing on your life? Then get that life under the reign of Jesus. You want God's blessing on your marriage? Get that marriage under king Jesus. You want God's blessing in your thought life? You want God's blessing on your business? You want God's blessing on the pursuits of life? Get those things under king Jesus, and you will have God's blessing on your life. And here's a here's a little question I wanna throw out to you. [00:06:12] (30 seconds)  #BlessingUnderJesus

We call Jesus lord or king, and we literally give our allegiance to our own will and our own desires above and beyond his will and his desires. So what am I trying to say? Here's what I'm trying to say. Here's what the scripture says. Look. Jesus as king is not merely a statement for our beliefs. It's a claim upon our lives. Who's your king? [00:09:39] (25 seconds)  #JesusIsKing

In the very beginning in Genesis chapter one, God created, listen, he created the world as it was meant to be. That's the scene in Genesis one. The world as it was meant to be. Oh, by the way, just so we don't get off track and lose the plot, in Genesis chapter one, the name God is used 32 times in one chapter. This book is not about you. It's not about me. It's not about your best life. It's it's about God. His story, his purposes, his aims, his will, his goal, his glory. [00:11:39] (35 seconds)  #AboutGodNotMe

Here's a little fun fact. God's image bearers were meant to fulfill two purposes from this scene. Two purposes. One is to relate with God vertically. I mean, clearly, God over them, them undergoes a relationship. Second purpose is to represent God horizontally. God created humans, us, to reign with him, to rule with him, to manage his creation with him. [00:14:55] (26 seconds)  #RelateAndRepresent

that is sharpened as we go through the bible. Here's the definition of the kingdom of God. If you have your pen out, get ready and write it down. Here it is. The kingdom of God is the rule of God over the people of God who channel the blessing of God into the world. That's it. It's you living under God's rulership, experiencing all that blessing and channeling it out to the world around you. That's the kingdom of God. [00:16:55] (27 seconds)  #ChannelGodsBlessing

Now imagine a world like this. Imagine a world where all is relationships and all is right and everything as it was meant to be. This is the world that God intended. And if you just zoom out and look at, what do we see in Genesis one? We see the word would be harmony. We see harmony between God and humanity relating. We see harmony between humanity and humanity relating. We see harmony between humanity and the environment. We're managing it, not exploiting it. And we see harmony within human beings. They know who they are in God. This is the world as it was meant to be. This is not the world we are living in today. [00:17:22] (45 seconds)  #RestoreGodlyHarmony

Wherever Jesus is king, God's blessing reigns. And the first scene in the bible, we see God on the throne brought blessing. Second thing, if you're a note taker, write this down. Second scene, we see self on the throne brought the curse. Here we go. In Genesis chapter one, the scene that we looked at, humanity said to God, thine is the kingdom and all was right with the world and it was meant to be. But in Genesis three, just a couple of chapters over, humanity went from thine is the kingdom to mine is the kingdom. And we rebelled against the kingship of God. And that's when everything went wrong, not just in our world, but also in us. [00:19:23] (48 seconds)  #ThineToMine

And in that very moment, listen, God was dethroned, and that throne never sits empty. Something else was enthroned. The question is, what was enthroned? If God was dethroned, what was enthroned? And God was dethroned, and guess what? Self was enthroned. The kingdom of God was commandeered by the kingdom of self. That's me independent of God. In fact, here's what I'm trying to say. The curse of sin and self obsession is not merely the result of disobedience. That's in there. It was the result of rejecting God's kingship. That's where it all went wrong. [00:22:22] (42 seconds)  #SelfOnTheThrone

So I want you to think of it this way. In the kingdom of self, everyone's just kinda tooting their own horn. Everyone's just kinda playing their own thing. Everyone's like, I live by my truth. I'm going by my agenda. I wanna go with what feels right for me. Me. Me. Me. It's the kingdom of me. It's the kingdom of self. And so the kingdom of self, everybody's tooting their own horn. And so here's kinda instead of the harmony that God meant for us, here's how that actually sounds now. [00:23:22] (34 seconds)  #KingdomOfSelf

The fallout from rejecting God as king was epic. In fact, I'll just do it very quickly. First of all, evil and death entered God's good creation. We did a funeral here yesterday. Every time we do a funeral, we're reminded, death is death should not be. People shouldn't die. In Genesis one, God created a world where people don't die, But that's not the world we live in. Why? Because we took our dominion, opened the door, and allowed sin, evil, and death in. Now we have death [00:24:59] (27 seconds)  #SinBroughtDeath

And the cool thing is right here in the midst of the in breaking curse of sin and evil and death, God spoke a promise. Right in the middle of it all, in the midst of the fallout. In God's great love, he announced the gospel for the very first time. We'll talk about this on the podcast. It's from Genesis three fifteen. It's called the protovangelium. It's the first announcement of the gospel. God promised that one would come, a human would come and break the curse of sin and restore God's blessing over our lives yet again. [00:26:47] (36 seconds)  #FirstGospelPromise

So here's the good news, friends. God wants to restore his blessing on us. And so the rest of the Bible from Genesis three traces this promise of a coming king who will restore the blessing of God and break the curse of sin. Traces it through call of Abraham, Genesis 12, and through the family of Abraham, the Israelites, all the way through the kings and the prophets, all the way to Jesus Christ himself. [00:29:35] (26 seconds)  #ComingKingRestores

From Genesis three right through the rest of the scripture, it unfolds the unfolding struggle and battle between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God. From Abraham, as I said, through Israel and the kings to the prophets, all the way to Jesus Christ himself. And you need to understand. Listen, friends. Listen. The motivation to live for yourself was inspired in Genesis three by the devil himself. Supernatural evil is at work to motivate me to live for me and not for Jesus. That's the story of the Bible. That's the story of the world. That's the story of me. That's the story of you, and that's the story of every person you will ever meet. [00:30:20] (46 seconds)  #KingdomsInConflict

Then one day, the promised king did arrive. He came to set things right. He came to lift us from the fall. He came to heal all the damage that sin and evil had done. Heal the separation between us and God, and us and one another, and us and the the creation, and even us within ourselves. [00:31:06] (21 seconds)  #JesusHealsTheDivide

you ever heard of let me see your hand if you've ever heard of reverse engineering. It's where you take the mess and you go, okay, let's just track this back. Let's reverse engineer it. All went wrong when we rejected God's kingship. So all begins to be set right when we submit to God's kingship. No mention here about being a nice person. No mention here about doing religious things. Just the truth. It all went wrong when we rejected God's kingship. And it all begins to be set right when we submit to God's kingship. So how does that work? [00:32:50] (35 seconds)  #SubmitToRestore

``So here's the good news. The blessing that God intended is available, but it begins with an ending. The end of self rule is the beginning of Christ's rule. The end of living for you is the beginning of living under God's kingdom in Christ. So I want you to know this, friends. Jesus didn't come to improve self rule. There's a lot of Christianity that teaches that Jesus did not come to improve self rule. He came to replace it. He came to rethrone God over the hearts of people. [00:34:31] (37 seconds)  #EndSelfStartChrist

Jesus didn't die on a cross and defeat death so that you can look and live exactly like everybody else who doesn't care. He did those things so that we would allow him to be on the throne of our hearts, to reorganize our lives under his kingship whereby we experience human flourishing and the blessing that we all long for. [00:37:39] (21 seconds)  #ChristOnTheThrone

Friends, no one will love you like Jesus. No one will lead you like Jesus. No one will care for you like Jesus. No one will grow you like Jesus. No one will protect you like Jesus. So why? Why delay? Why wouldn't you surrender to his kingship today? [00:41:54] (20 seconds)  #NoOneLikeJesus