The Reign of God Acts 28 v 31

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The Reign of GodActs 28 v 31

• TIMES ARE A CHANGING, SO ALSO OUR METHODS, NOT
  OUR MESSAGE.

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Mark 115

• The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God
  has come near, repent, and believe in the good
  news
• Luke 4 v 18-21 this scripture is fulfilled
• Matt 5,6,7 characteristics of the Kingdom

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The Reign of God in Todays world

• ACTS 28 V 31
• preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those
  things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.
• Luke 4 v 18-21
• to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
• ..this day is the scripture fulfilled in your
  ears.

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The Great Omission

• Dallas Willard says The last command Jesus gave
  the church before he ascended to heaven was the
  Great Commission, the call for Christians to
  "make disciples of all the nations." But
  Christians have responded by making "Christians,"
  not "disciples." This has been the church's Great
  Omission.

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• His miraculous deeds are signs that the Kingdom
  of God that he was announcing had indeed arrived.
• This kingdom is open to all, unlike being born a
  JEW and all are invited to enter into it, but it
  is given especially or preferentially to those
  who are marginalized, that is, the poor, the
  afflicted, the oppressed, the captives (Luke 4
  18).
•  

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• The eschatological events of Jesus
  death/resurrection are a powerful validation by
  God of Jesus message about Gods power over sin,
  corruption, injustice, and violence. Gods rule
  is and will be characterized by universal peace,
  justice, and love, and it is already here

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• Jesus taught us to pray......thy kingdom come,
  thy will be done, so the kingdom has arrived, is
  arriving and will eventually arrive to fill the
  earth!!!!! This is our mandate, to serve the
  Kingdom.

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• These approaches to the Bible and theology came
  to be called "contextual theologies" within the
  Western academy. This term in itself betrayed the
  arrogant ethnocentricity of the West, for the
  assumption was that other places are contexts and
  they do their theology for those contexts we,
  of course, have the real thing, the objective,
  contextless theology. Changeless and eternal.

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• Chris Wright says
• Theology was not to be done in the study and then
  applied in the world. Rather, action for and on
  behalf of the poor and oppressed undertaken as a
  first priority, and then out of that commitment
  and praxis theological reflection would follow.

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• Again Chris Wright says
•  What is a sinner, in the vocabulary of first
  century Judaism? A sinner is simply a person who
  is apathetic to the law and disinterested in its
  application to daily life. Thus, then as now,
  sinners are folk who simply do not wish to, or
  try to, live out the fullness of the will of
  God.  Are not participating in the Kingdom 

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• Q Who are the sinners? They are the folk who
  will never have time for God until they realize
  that God has time for them. When will they
  realize this?
• Ans When the rather dull-of-wit disciples of
  Jesus act like their master instead of the
  Pharisees. The gospel is evil spoken of because
  of the way Gods people choose to live.They are
  the new pharisees.

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• The church has no self-identity except as rooted
  in and derived from the mission that Jesus
  received from his Father. And given the
  centrality of the reign of God in Jesus mission,
  as we have observed above, it would be
  theologically wrong to subordinate the reign of
  God to the church, as it was done in the old
  theology of mission

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• Mission defines what the church is and what it
  must do. Consequently, the whole church is
  missionary, The pilgrim Church is missionary
  by her very nature, since it is
• Missio Deo
• .mission of the Son and the,mission of the Holy
  Spirit in obedience to the Father that she draws
  her origin,

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• Hence, it would be wrong to regard mission
  primarily as foreign mission and that only an
  elite few are called to this mission. there is
  a new awareness that missionary activity is a
  matter for all Christians, for all dioceses and
  parishes, Church institutions and associations .
  Hence, the hallowed distinction between the
  sending church and the receiving church is
  thereby invalidated.

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Three situations for the churchs mission where
...

• 1. Christ and His Gospel are not known, or which
  lack Christian communities sufficiently mature to
  be able to incarnate the faith in their own
  environment and proclaim it to other groups. EG
  Libya, Morroco.
• The Glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the
  waters cover the seas

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• 2. Christian communities with adequate and solid
  ecclesiastical structures. They bear witness
  to the Gospel in their surroundings and have a
  sense of commitment to the universal mission. 7
  churches in Crowborough alone.
• 3. Where entire groups of the baptized have lost
  their living sense of the faith, or even no
  longer consider themselves members of the
  Church, and live a life far removed from Christ

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• foreign mission does not constitute the entire
  mission of the church but is only a part, albeit
  necessary, of it. Furthermore, its principal goal
  is no longer saving souls and church planting
  but bearing witness to the Kingdom of God. BUT!
• More than two-thirds of the people in the world
  have never heard of Jesus Christ, and that they
  are slipping into a Christless eternity at the
  rate of more than 3 every second, should show
  that this is not enough
•  

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• when Protestants as a whole average giving 3
  pence per week to missions.
• when it takes up to 20 churches to support one
  missionary.
• when some denominations have less than 10
  missionaries
• when Orthodox, Bible-believing churches with
  hundreds of members give less than 1 of their
  income to missions.

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How do we express our faith and our love to Him?

• By committing ourselves to His mission. Jesus
  doesnt say anything about saving sinners and
  getting them into heaven. The primary priority of
  his mission
• 1. to preach good news to the poor, the
  kingdom has arrived with it's king!.
• 2. to bind up the brokenhearted,
• 3. to proclaim freedom for the captives and
• 4. release from darkness for the prisoners.
•  

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Christianity has been a repressive forceagainst
the advancement of civilization.

• Karl Marx termed Christianity an "opiate" of the
  masses, a tool of exploitation.
• Sigmund Freud called Christianity an illusion, a
  crutch, a source of guilt and pathologies.
• Bertrand Russell "I say quite deliberately that
  the Christian religion, as organized in its
  churches, has been and still is the principal
  enemy of the moral progress in the world."

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• Renaissance popes are not Christianity St.
  Francis of Assisi is.
• Pizarro and Cortez are not Christianity,
  Bartolome de Las Casas is.
• Captain Ball, a Yankee slave captain,
  is not Christianity, Wilburforce is.
• Jesus Himself foretold that "tares" would be won
  among the "wheat." (Matt. 1325-39 ff).  

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The Rise of Modern Science Science rose in the
West, not in the East. Why?

• Whitehead and Oppenheimer insisted that modern
  science could not have been born except in a
  Christian milieu.
• Awareness of order (i.e. cause/effect, cf. Rom.
  120). Views of man as a superintendent of
  nature.
• In 252 A.D., the Christians of Corinth saved the
  city from the plague by responding to the needs
  of those who were simply dragged into the street.
• In 312 A.D., half of the Roman Empire came under
  the political and social influence of
  Christianity under the rule of Constantine.
• Early Christians stood in opposition to
  infanticide, degradation of women, gladiatorial
  combats, slavery, etc. 

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Examples in the Middle Ages (Consider the
Monks, not the knights.)

• Monasteries served as hospitals, places of
  refuge.
• Monastic schools trained scribes to preserve
  manuscripts.
• Monasteries also developed agricultural skills
  and knowledge.
• The Scholastics remain a pivotal period of
  intellectual growth.
• A time of major artistic development
  architecture, music, literature

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Wesley preached the social responsibilities of
Christian piety

• 1772 - Slavery was judicially excluded from
  England, 14,000 freed
• 1792 - Conditions aboard slave ships were
  regulated by law
• 1808 - The English slave trade was abolished.
• 1831 - All European slave trade abolished.
  England spent 15 million pounds for enforcement,
  even making payments to Spain and Portugal to
  stop the trade.

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• 1833 - Slavery abolished in British Empire 45
  million pounds paid in compensation to free
  780,933 slaves. Wilberforce, along with Buxton,
  Macaulay, and Clark . . . all evangelicals who
  were converted under Wesley's ministry, were the
  top leaders in ending slavery (This British
  action in the 1830's profoundly affected American
  attitudes which resulted in the Civil War).Prison
  reform John Howard, Elizabeth Fry (England)
  Fliedner (Germany). Florence Nightingale, the
  mother of modern nursing, was trained in one of
  Fliedner's schools in Kaiserswerth.

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• Labor reform Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of
  Shaftesbury, self-described "Evangelical of the
  Evangelicals" pioneered child-labor laws,
  prohibited women working in the mines,
  established mental health sanitarium, built parts
  and libraries).
• TUC.

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Acts 28

• Barnardo's Homes (world's largest orphanage
  system)
• William Booth's Salvation Army
• Henri Dunant, a student evangelist in Geneva,
  founded the Red Cross in 1865
• YMCA was founded in 1844 and grew greatly The
  Missionaries from William Carey on
• CMS (Christian Missionary Society) taught 200,000
  to read in East Africa

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