Matthew 4:12-25 "Here It Comes!" Scott Hoezee

There is something eminently appropriate this morning to have as our guests a singing group called "The King's Choraliers." Just the name of this group ties in with our passage today--not the "Choraliers" part but the fact that this group says it belongs to a "King." If I had to guess, I would say that few of you gave this group's name a second thought when you saw it in the bulletin. That's because most of us are pretty well steeped in Christian ways of talking. But to many people in our society, talking about a king or kingdom sounds odd. This country doesn't have a king. Even England, the most well-known monarchy in the world, doesn't have a king just now. If this group were called "The Queen's Choraliers," many people would assume this was a choir from Westminster Abbey in London!

Naturally, we understand this royal reference: we're talking here about the King of kings and the Lord of lords who is Jesus. Still, if we are honest, we'd probably have to admit that the notion of God's kingdom is not something we spend large blocks of time pondering during an average week. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the word "kingdom" pops up 117 times. Jesus talked about this all the time, yet how often does this word pass our lips? More urgently, how often does even this idea cross our minds?

If you say the Lord's Prayer now and again, you intone the petition "Your kingdom come," but what finally does that even mean? Is this something God has to do solo or does our praying for the coming of God's kingdom have implications for us, too? And if so, what in the world might such implications entail? This morning let's allow Matthew 4 to help us focus on the reality of the kingdom.

Last year when we looked at Matthew 4, I focused your attention on the geography of this passage. No sooner does Jesus begin his public ministry, and he heads very far north in Palestine, way up to the region of Galilee. He leaves behind the center of Judaism, Jerusalem, in favor of a very out-of-the-way locale. But to the minds of most people back then, when Jesus went north, he also went wrong.

If you are going to try to establish yourself as a public figure, you try to nudge your way into the limelight, not out of it. Today if you are an author and get the chance to plug your book by having Katie Couric interview you on the Today show, you snap up the opportunity! If Oprah Winfrey wants to make your novel one of her Book Club titles, you are only too glad because every book Oprah puts onto her list appears on also the New York Times bestseller list soon thereafter. So what would we think of an author who turned down the Couric interview and the Oprah Book Club offer in favor of driving over to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to be interviewed by a reporter for the Broken Arrow Gazette? We'd say he was out-of-touch! That's not how you sell a lot of books.

To the minds of his contemporaries, Jesus messed up, too, by giving up the potential spotlight of Jerusalem in favor of Capernaum way out in the backwaters of Palestine. Even Matthew feels the need to muster a biblical heavyweight like Isaiah to show that Jesus did not go wrong when he went north but instead Jesus went north to fulfill a prophecy. But the point is that it is only after Jesus had put a lot of miles between himself and Jerusalem that he announced the advent of the kingdom. Maybe it was Jesus' way of saying that the kingdom of God is not tied down to a single location, and certainly it cannot be restricted to the spots on the map we deem important. The kingdom can come, and does come, most anywhere and everywhere, which is a point to which we will return in a few minutes.

But for now notice how Jesus puts this in verse 17: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!" I like the way commentator Dale Bruner paraphrases this, "Move, because here comes the whole new world of God!" The verb translated as "is near" is the same word Jesus uses later in Matthew when he sees Judas in Gethsemane and says, "Here comes my betrayer." So when Jesus says in verse 17 that the kingdom of heaven "is near," he means it's marching straight toward you! If you're crossing a street and see a garbage truck barreling down on you, you may well say, "Hey, look out! " Jesus' words have that same urgency. "Look out! Move! A whole new world is headed straight toward you!"

As Bruner says, every word of Jesus is nuclear. These words are urgent and the implications of this kingdom's approach are immediate. If someone tells you to "Watch out!" when you're crossing a street but then you just stand there, something is going to happen quite soon. Jesus' point is the same: you cannot hear him tell you that the kingdom is approaching but then just stand there like a statue with your hands in your pockets. You need to repent, literally to turn around, so that you are ready to embrace this kingdom, so that you can hop onto the kingdom instead of getting crushed by it as it rolls over you.

Jesus is himself a good example: he no sooner announces the kingdom and he immediately starts gathering disciples. Those of you who were here last Sunday morning may recognize a little hiccup between Matthew and John. Last Sunday morning in John we saw Andrew leaving John the Baptist behind to follow after Jesus. Only later did he go and fetch his brother Simon. Now Matthew says that Andrew and Simon were both fishing with their father when Jesus took the initiative to call them to be fishers of men.

This is one example that the four gospel writers did indeed shape their material to fit larger themes in their individual gospels. But the goal is always the same: to present the single truth of Jesus as richly and fully as possible. In the case of Matthew, he wanted to show Jesus taking the initiative as evidence that the kingdom really was there. The kingdom is so real that Jesus immediately begins to populate it with citizens.

After all, it's impossible to become a citizen of a country that doesn't exist. Every year thousands of people apply for citizenship in the United States. They fill out an application, go through a series of background checks, interviews, and exams, finally appearing before a judge who administers an oath of citizenship in this nation. But none of that would be possible if the U.S. were not real. If you call up Vern Ehlers' office in Washington to inquire how you can become a citizen of Narnia, you will likely be referred not to the Immigration Department but to Pine Rest! You cannot apply for citizenship of nations that do not exist.

Just so in Matthew 4: Jesus is able to call Andrew and Simon, James and John into his kingdom because to Jesus' mind it is that real. Jesus saw the kingdom approaching as tangibly as he later saw Judas approaching in Gethsemane; as clearly as I watched some of you walk up to our new main entrance before the service this morning. If a kingdom is real, it can have real citizens. Jesus' kingdom is real, and so he begins to call people into it.

He then also begins to perform some signs that helped to validate the kingdom's reality and power. And notice that Matthew places the preaching of the good news on a par with the healings and the exorcisms. Jesus did miracles not for their own sake but only and always as signs that the content of his words was true. You had to believe what Jesus said. Jesus could clear up your life-long battle with psoriasis, but if you did not believe the message Jesus preached, you would be no better off in the long run.

But the point in Matthew 4 is that both Jesus' preaching and his miracles were proof that the kingdom was there. And because it was there and because it was real, it affected everyone, giving them new things to think about, new things to believe in, new things to do, new things to experience.

When we opened this sermon, we wondered about how seldom we think or talk in kingdom-terms. If it were just a vocabulary issue, just a matter of the words we use, then that might be a somewhat minor matter. So what we need to think about in a more significant vein is whether our awareness of Jesus as King has as great a shaping influence on us as it did for the people in Matthew 4. We cannot pray "Your kingdom come," and then just sit back to see whether or not God will do something. We cannot come to church on Sundays to sing "Crown Him with Many Crowns" only to live Monday-Saturday as though we were self-ruled.

So let me suggest a little exercise to see if it makes a difference in our Christian witness and conduct. When you go to the office for work tomorrow, look at your desk, your work station, and pray as you take your seat, "Your kingdom come here, O God," and then try to do your work the rest of the day as though that kingdom has arrived through you. When you enter the classroom, the laundry room, the workshop, the auto garage, the store, pray "Your kingdom come here, O God," and then live like you believe it has.

Let that whole new world of God burst into your daily life. Let its effect be as tangible as the effect it had on those fishermen who quite literally left their fathers and occupations behind to enter the new world of God's kingdom in Christ. Let the kingdom's influence on you be as clear to see as it was when Jesus preached and a smile flashed across the faces of sad people who hadn't found anything worth grinning about in years. Let its effect be as real as when, after meeting Jesus, sick people went home healthy again.

We should live in such a way that our co-workers and friends sense the arrival of something real--a kingdom in which they can either become citizens or not, but at least they'll get the idea that for us the kingdom of God is not like Narnia or some other fantasy land with no true reality. Others should sense the reality of the kingdom through and because of our actions, the pattern of our speech, the manner by which we make decisions.

As a clergy person, I can testify that I don't like being treated differently by people out in society just because I'm a minister. I dislike it when the person cutting my hair finds out I'm a pastor and all of a sudden things get real quiet. I find it odd when I later hear someone say that he was surprised to discover I was a minister because he didn't think ministers laughed or told jokes or ever acted normal in any sense. None of us wants to be treated like a fanatic, and sometimes we even work actively to demonstrate that despite our coming to church every Sunday, we are finally "normal people."

To a certain extent that's understandable. When people have genuinely false, if not ridiculous, assumptions about us, it is well to clear those up. But if we are really citizens of that whole new world of God's kingdom, then there should be some significant things that are different about us. People should hesitate to say certain things in our presence. People should know that we're not the ones to come to with a scheme to embezzle from the boss. People should sense that we are thoughtful about moral matters and that we're not simply going to parrot popular opinion or change our minds about ethically weighty matters. Above all, people should sense in us the love, the grace, and the joy that Jesus himself exuded.

Citizens of the kingdom need not be happy all the time but we do need to demonstrate deep-seated joy and peace. We don't need to be trite optimists but neither should we carry around with us billowing clouds of despair and gloom. We don't need to become the world's doormat on which everyone wipes their feet but we should be humble and kind by demonstrating more concern about how other people are doing than in always trying to position ourselves for maximum personal benefit and gain.

I'll have more to say along these lines next Sunday--I'll have more to say because Jesus has more to say on the kingdom lifestyle, and those words of our Lord will come to us in the form of the Sermon on the Mount. As we will see, everything Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 5-7 presents us not with the entrance requirements to get into the kingdom but rather with what simply happens to you once that kingdom has burst into your life.

It's not everyday, in the church or outside of it, that you run into a group that has such an obvious kingdom identity as the King's Choraliers. But in a real way our own kingdom identity needs to be very obvious, too. Through our words, thoughts, deeds, and just generally through who we are as God's people, we should convey in a myriad of ways the message, "Brace yourselves! Because here comes the new world of God!" It's a new world that needs to be visible in us. Amen.