Video Transcript: The Kingdom of God

Francis - I remember when I was a new believer, and I would hear phrases like  the kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven. Not even as a new believer, honestly, it was for decades, as a believer, I would read in the Bible, the kingdom of  heaven, kingdom of God, like it meant nothing to me the word kingdom. And I'm  guessing it's true for a lot of people, because it just becomes, I can't relate to it.  I've never been under a king. You know, we live in a country where there's a  president, you feel free to obey Him, disobey Him, whatever, you know, mock  Him, you know, this. So this concept we get in scripture of the kingdom, I, it's so  good that we study this because we live in a different place. And the idea of a  king is that, you know, sometimes we go, okay, I'm so glad that Jesus is Lord,  because I'm under his protection. But this, but do you understand that you're,  you're under a king's protection, but you're also under his rule. Like they, they  didn't separate that back, then they were glad that this person was king. But that meant that they were going to obey this king or that there were there were  consequences. And so it is a very important lesson to understand what does it  mean that we're a part of the Kingdom of God, now, he is truly our king. And he  protects us. He loves us, He cares for us. But we also come under His authority.  

David - And so I think it's good on a practical level to spend time with the person  or people you're discipling and say, Are there areas of your life that are not really under his reign that you've not submitted to His reign and his rule? Like to really  dig in there are your use of possessions? Is he king over that? Or is that just  

kind of an area of your life where you kind of do what you want, and you've got  your relationship with Christ over here, or relationship, and there's all kinds of  different areas of our lives to say, okay, is everything under his rule, I mean, this  is, this is a part of the grand picture here in Scripture, we've got this promise of  the king, as far as lesson talks about all throughout the Old Testament, and, and  the beauty is the New Testament, the King is here. And he lives among us for 30 plus years, the King Jesus in the flesh, but then he leaves. And He gives us His  promise that he's coming back. And so we live this, we live in between the time  so to speak of the kings first coming, the king Second Coming, where we are  living in submission to Him, but the world around us is not completely in  submission to Him by any means. But we know he's coming back. And so that's  even where understanding the kingdom helps us understand disciple making.  Disciple making is advancing a kingdom is proclaiming the rule and reign of the  king. So he's coming back, it's calling people to submit to the king. And as we do that, we're in a sense, advancing his kingdom of the Earth, which is a powerful  picture of disciple making. 

Francis - this kingdom. Yeah, to proclaim this king, that's like bringing other  people into this army. I'm going to add to this, you know, that's the discipleship  picture is like, God wanted his kingdom expanded. It's like, Man, I want people 

from every nation as a part of this army, you know, me as the king me as the  ruler. And, and so we to, you know, we're supposed to distinguish ourselves.  Like you said, The world isn't thinking that he's the king. So we, as a people of  God, we're supposed to live differently. And well, we don't live that way. We  recognize there is a king. In fact, he's returning. And so we're busy doing this.  And this is how we stand out is that just like Israel, they were obedient to these  laws, that the other people didn't follow. Because Yahweh was not their God.  Why would I put myself under those commands? In the same way? It's like other people aren't gonna make disciples to further the kingdom. But we are. Why  because we're distinguished we're a unique group of people. We want to be  doing this when he returned.  

David - You know, there's so much imagery there. The church is I look at the  church is like an outpost to the kingdom. It's what the kingdom looks like, and  the community and then ways are live. This is scripture, like we're ambassadors  of the king. And so we don't, we don't just sit back and coast through Christianity while we wait for the kingdom come back. No, we're advancing this kingdom,  because we long for it even earlier in earlier lesson when Jesus says this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed the testimony to all nations and then the end  will come. So proclaim this gospel of Kingdom, keep that focus central in your  relationship with the person people you are discipling. Are we are we working for the advancement of his kingdom? We're not just sitting back and soaking in who we proclaiming the king to just keep coming back to that because if we don't,  we'll be missing missing the point in the end that disciple making is about the  advancement of the kingdom.