The Good News of the Kingdom
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Jesus begins by proclaiming - the Kingdom of God is at hand. Most considered that to be very good news. Some didn’t. Many still don’t.
Good News is to hear something you’ve been hoping for. What do most people hope for? I think most just want to live their lives, have a family, friends, safety, security, good health and be able to live enjoyably. Almost everyone wants to live in a world of peace, justice and a respect for creation.
Our world wants these on the condition that God and Jesus need to stay out of it.
Well, we tried that experiment. It was called the 20th century. It resulted in two world wars that killed numberless civilians. Getting rid of God did not bring a world of peace, justice and the preservation of creation. It resulted in all the problems we face today and provided no solutions.
Just ask Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Political Prisoner who survived the Siberian Labor Camps. He said: “If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
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We are tempted to want a world, a Kingdom - without God so that we can do what we please without negative consequences.
But doing what we please usually means giving into our default desires. Like pride which becomes extreme competition where I have to win and you have to lose on every level – school, sports, professionally, economically – everything. We become vain, where everything is about me. I am not responsible for anyone else. We fall into envy – if you are better than me I will destroy you. We live in sloth – I don’t want the responsibility to be an excellent human. We slide toward anger, greed, gluttony and lust. Oh, lust just means that we use and discard one another rather than love and care for each other. That is how we get to abortion – it’s the result of use and freedom to discard whoever we don’t want. Vice makes people and our world vicious.
You wanna live with people like that? You think that leads to peace, justice and the preservation of nature?
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Am I saying a person can’t be good without God?
Without God living in our soul and transforming us from vice to virtue we do not have what it takes to create peace, justice and the preservation of the world. In fact, without God, we will be at each other’s throats. Oh wait – that is where we are!
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The Good News is that God exists, God is really God. And the Kingdom of God is Jesus.
The Good News is that Jesus did something beyond our imagination. He comes to live in our soul which will make us share in God’s life – we will become divine.
Everything here ends. No matter what, we all die. No matter what, eventually the Sun will burn out and the universe will die. The Good News is that Jesus will raise everything to new life.
With Jesus dwelling in us we will rise after death. We will live forever in the Kingdom of God with resurrected souls and bodies in a New Universe where peace and justice will flourish without end.
And with Jesus living in us now, we can reach our full potential here on earth. Then we can do the greatest good for others and the whole world.
Jesus living in us now gives us the power to overcome our sinful self-destructive tendencies.
That is very Good News!
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What do we need to do?
Thank Jesus for coming to live in you.
Talk with him from your heart.
Read his life, listen to what he says and spend time with him.
Then try your best to do what he tells you.
When you fall, turn to him. He is always there to pick you up when you are down. That is friendship with Jesus. That is the Kingdom of God.