Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Know the Real Gospel? | Christmas | Isaiah 9:7

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilm. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we are in our Christmas series. We're exploring the stories around Jesus's birth and the prophecies pointing forward to it. What's the gospel? Well, technically, the word gospel just means good news.

Starting point is 00:00:28 But what's the good news that Jesus came to announce and to accomplish? Is it the good news? that Jesus is going to take me to heaven? Is it the good news that he wants to be my personal savior? Is it the good news that with one sinner's prayer I can be set free from hell? Jesus didn't hide the ball. He actually told us exactly what kind of good news he came to announce. He said it again and again. What was it? Jesus came to announce the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom. Again and again, throughout the Gospels, I could just go with passage after passage after passage. Jesus repeats this exact phrase, the gospel of the kingdom.

Starting point is 00:01:10 The kingdom, whatever that is, it's at the heart of Jesus's central message. It's at the heart of his own self-understanding. It's at the heart of his practical work on earth. I've asked hundreds of people to explain the gospel to me, and I can count on one hand how many people use the word that Jesus used most frequently with gospel. Kingdom. No one ever talks about kingdom whenever we talk about the gospel, but Jesus couldn't talk about the gospel without talking about the kingdom. Our problem is historical.

Starting point is 00:01:38 We live downstream from a long line of Christian thinkers who have had a tendency to spiritualize Jesus' message until he sounded more like Plato than Isaiah. Plato, if you don't know who he was, he was a pagan philosopher who lived between the time of Isaiah and Jesus. And he believed that this material world, this physical world, that it was evil, and that human, should aspire to ascend to a heavenly realm, a heavenly realm of ideals that isn't tainted by the physical. For Plato, salvation was escaping embodied existence to instead achieve a disembodied spiritual bliss. Greek Christians, after the time of Jesus, they misunderstood Jesus' language about heaven. And so they tried to fit Jesus into Plato's mold. They tried to say that when Jesus was talking about a kingdom, he was talking about us being disembodied, us, going up to some sort of

Starting point is 00:02:29 heavenly kingdom in the sky. They said that salvation was leaving behind this physical realm to go and be with heaven. But this had nothing to do with what Jesus or Isaiah taught. It had everything to do with what Plato taught. And so this is why so many well-meaning Jesus followers feel baffled when they read the Gospels. They don't find the gospel message about being saved from hell so they can go have a disembodied existence somewhere else. They don't hear that inside of the Gospels themselves. what they hear instead is that Jesus came to restore all things, including this physical universe. What they hear is that Jesus came to establish a kingdom. And not just a kingdom in the sky, he came to establish a kingdom to quote his prayer,

Starting point is 00:03:10 which is on earth as in heaven. He said, look, in heaven, in the heavenly realm, that kingdom is already established. But what are we doing? We're bringing it on earth as in heaven. The story of the Bible is the story of God's kingdom coming down. That's what we see in the book of Revelation. heaven descending to earth. The story of the Bible is a story of God's kingdom coming down,

Starting point is 00:03:31 not human Christians floating up. This is why Isaiah wrote this prophecy about the coming king in Isaiah 9-7. Let's read it. Of the greatness of his government and of his peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish. accomplish this. Isaiah could not have been more clear. Jesus wasn't trying to confuse us when he talked

Starting point is 00:04:03 about a kingdom. He was just assuming that we all knew his pal Isaiah, and what Isaiah said about a king who was coming to establish his government, his throne, his rule on earth. That's what Isaiah said. That's what Jesus said. That's what everyone expected. The gospel of the kingdom is the good news that a descendant of David will sit on David's throne on earth forever. Just as God promised David in 2 Samuel 716. Under his reign, under this king's reign, the earth itself is going to be transformed, which is what we read about in Psalm 72. It describes all of the crops growing with incredible growth so that they can feed all of the people because the king is here on earth. The Old Testament also teaches that justice and peace will characterize all human relationships instead of injustice and

Starting point is 00:04:49 antagonism. In this new reality, it's not going to come about by human effort. It can't be earned by human merit, it only comes about through the power and the zeal of Yahweh, God Almighty. Christmas is the first chapter in this world-changing story. It's the beginning of the good news of the kingdom. The question that it begs us to ask is not, do you want to go to heaven? It's simply this, do you want to kneel before your king? Do you want to give your king allegiance? Do you want to transfer your citizenship from this world to,

Starting point is 00:05:25 His kingdom, which is coming on earth as in heaven. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations. Thank you.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Know the Real Gospel? | Christmas | Isaiah 9:7

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