Welcome to the Kingdom of God

Today we're going to start a journey. It's a bold journey. It is to a new world, a world that is going to come to this earth. And we are privileged at this particular point in time to have this understanding, because our world that we live in today is at a turning point.

An epoch is changing. We're at a crossroads in history. The United States of America, which is the most powerful, richest, and blessed nation on the face of the earth, is at a crossroads. The certainties of the past are gone. In terms of the economies, the jobs, the world that many of us grew up in, that past is changing. And there is a very uncertain future for many people as we face what is in front of us today. This very weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks in New York City.

Tomorrow, on 9-11, 10 years ago, the attacks took place in New York, in Washington, and in a field in Pennsylvania. A tragedy that, for our generation, is the greatest, most unspeakable tragedy that we've ever had to live through.

And in the past 10 years, since that one singular event in our time, our country, and our world has seen some fundamental events occur that has changed us, irrevocably, for our time. And as I say, you and I live at a very critical juncture. While these large events unfold, and they are really beyond our ability to control, we can make choices where we live today. You and I have the power of choice in front of us. We can begin living today by the principles and the teachings, the values and the laws of the Kingdom of God.

That is the choice we do have. We may not be able to control everything around us, but it is the way of that Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, that can help us to navigate the uncertainty of the present and the challenges of the future.

These seminars that we have here today, and we'll come back in January and have some more, and we'll have some more afterwards. And in the meantime, in our congregations, on our Beyond Today program, and all of the literature that we produce, and all of our media efforts in the United Church of God, we will continue to focus on and refine and hone the message of the Kingdom of God. But we're only going to begin to talk about it here today.

We're going to come back to it in the future. It's such a large subject. In fact, it's as large as this book right here. The subject of the Kingdom of God is only as large as this book in one sense, and it's even larger than that.

And we'll not be able to cover it all. But we will begin to refine that and begin a fascinating journey. You're going to learn what is the Kingdom of God, how it will come to this earth, how the prophecies of the Kingdom of God will affect America and the English-speaking nations of this world, and actually all nations of this earth, where we stand in Bible prophecy, and why so many seemingly unsettling events, both natural, political, and otherwise, are taking place every day in our world, and where we are in that tract of fulfilled prophecy. We're also going to learn how Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the King of that coming Kingdom can give you an eye that anyone who seeks it, enter peace today to live with the turbulent times and within the turbulent times that we have.

So at this point, in this particular presentation that I'm able to make here, we're going to talk about this critical period in human history at the end of an age of man, just before the coming of Jesus Christ. And to do so, we need to set the stage.

And we need to do so with one very fundamental Scripture that is in the book of Mark, chapter 1. Those of you that have a Bible, please do so, and turn to Mark, chapter 1. Follow along with me. I'll endeavor to go slow enough to emphasize the message here. But in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, we find where Jesus Christ began to preach about the coming Kingdom of God. And that message, this was the most fundamental message that He had in His entire ministry.

Mark, chapter 1, and verse 14, it says, after John, speaking of John the Baptist, was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel. This is our starting point. This is our anchor verse for understanding this in our particular time. Christ came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Now, He said that the time is fulfilled.

For His time, a unique point and again another critical juncture of human history had occurred. Christ, the Son of God, God in the flesh had come. And He was making this announcement about the Kingdom of God. And so much was wrapped up in Christ's mission in His first coming in the flesh as the Son of God.

So much was writing on that. So much was so important to what He was doing that it was at that point in time, now over 2,000 years ago, a time of fulfillment. And in His person, the Kingdom of God was there. And certainly the message that He preached was there. And He told His audience then, repent and believe in that message in the Gospel. Repentance is a word that is kind of hard today to wrap our minds around.

We don't like to understand that. In our modern 21st century world, we don't like to repent because to repent means that we've made a mistake and we need to change. And we as human beings don't like to do that. But it is a critical matter for God. And it is critical to becoming a part of the Kingdom of God in the future. And it's critical to living the values and laws of that Kingdom today to repent and to believe in that.

Christ said, the Kingdom of God was at hand. He came to preach the good news of the Gospel of the Kingdom. A Gospel that had been prophesied by the prophets and by those that had gone before and by at least the Jews of the first century was long understood. It was on His lips. What Jesus said wherever He went, He talked about the Kingdom of God. He said it was like a pearl of great price. He said it was like seed being sown. He said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. Every thing He talked about was to point people to the Kingdom. And the people among whom He came expected a Kingdom.

The idea of a Kingdom for a first century Jew was not something that was totally alien. It was not an alien idea like it is so much for us today. Talk about the Kingdom of God today. There are many different ideas that people have. But for Christ's audience in the first century, it was not all that strange. They were expecting something but there was misunderstanding even in what they were expecting. A great deal of misunderstanding.

In Luke 19, Jesus was just days away from His actual crucifixion, His death. And He was entering Jerusalem and the masses, the audience, the crowds were around Him in Luke 19. And in verse 11, they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear immediately. They thought it would come that week, at that time, in His person. And Christ gave a very long parable, which we won't go into, but He showed that, no, it's not going to come now. He talked about a parable in the story.

He said that the Kingdom of God is like a nobleman who goes into a far country to receive the Kingdom and to return. And He left the job for His servants to do. And so He showed that it was not going to come then. This was the first century. This was 2,000 years ago. He showed them that it would not be at that time, but in the future. The Kingdom of God in the Bible is a very important matter. It's spoken of as the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven and other places. It is at least in several places, even mentioned as the Kingdom of Christ, of our Lord and of our Christ.

It's the same event. It's the same idea. But it would not and it did not come at that particular time. When would it come? Christ showed that it will come in the fullness of time, just as His first coming was in the fullness of time. On another occasion here in the book of Luke 17, He made a comment that has been misunderstood by people in verse 20 of Luke 17.

He was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come. Again, a question that a lot of people always want to know. And He answered them and He said, the Kingdom of God does not come with observation, nor will they say, see here or see there. For indeed, the Kingdom of God is within you. Sometimes people take this verse and lift it out and say, well, the Kingdom is within us. It's within our heart. It's when we make a commitment to the Lord or accept Christ. And it's something that's kind of nebulous and ethereal and it's kind of a spiritual feeling in our heart.

And they've misunderstood what this verse is talking about. That's not what the Kingdom is in its fullness. The Kingdom of God that Jesus was talking about here, and this particular phrase, it's better rendered...what He's saying is, the Kingdom is in your midst. And it was in their midst through Him, through His person. He was the King of that Kingdom. He was the embodiment of that Kingdom and everything that He taught and the way He lived and the way He acted among the people.

It was in their midst at that moment in time. And He was expounding the message of the Kingdom, but they, many in His audience, were rejecting His gospel of the Kingdom. Again, they were looking for something to overthrow the Roman rule of their period. They were looking for the rise once again of a Kingdom of Judah or a Kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament sense with Messiah at its head and David as the King.

But that's not what was going to happen and that was not the time. But He certainly elaborated and He expanded the message of the Kingdom when He said it's in your midst. He was giving a hint as well to show people that it can be in one's life as long as we yield to Christ as our King, as our Lord and our Master, those who are the elect and those who are called, one can experience a foretaste of that Kingdom in one's life today before the fullness of it comes and in that it's always centered upon Jesus Christ.

But that's a fine line and that always represents, to be quite frank, the tension between the present and the future. The fullness of the Kingdom has not yet come even 2,000 years from the time of Jesus Christ's first coming, but it will come in its fullness.

But there were misunderstandings at that time and have always been. Some began to feel after Christ's death and history shows that the church was the Kingdom of God. And that idea began to shape and fold a different church other than the one that Christ founded. But is the church the Kingdom of God? No, it isn't. Those who are part of the church from the first century, from the time of Christ to even to this very day, those who have been called to the church as the elect are only ambassadors for a Kingdom that has not yet fully been brought to this earth. If you look at the idea of an ambassador today, he represents his home country in a foreign land, the ambassador to Great Britain or the ambassador to Russia.

He occupies an embassy, a compound, a place that is typically American soil within that land. And he represents the American people and the American government. But he's a temporary dweller in that land, only representing the values of the United States of America. We represent the values of the Kingdom of God. In Indianapolis, Indiana, or Noblesville, Indiana, or Bloomington, or wherever you and I live, in our little neighborhood, the job we hold, the cubicle we reside in, and the interactions we have with somebody, we represent the Kingdom of God in our words and in our actions.

And as all of us find all too often, we better be very good. We better be very careful because if our example is not there, somebody might find out that we claim to be a Christian and to believe in the Kingdom of God. And if we don't live it, we can tarnish its reputation.

We want to always be very, very careful. Jesus Christ constantly taught about the Kingdom of God. He taught about it being the highest priority in our lives, the highest value in our lives. In Matthew 6 and verse 33, He admonished His followers, Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Seek it first. Make it the highest, most important matter in your life.

In Matthew 13, verse 44, He said again, The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. It's the most important value in our life. Have you ever saved for something? Months at a time, and you finally get all the cash up and you go to buy that item, which is hard for us to do today because we're used to putting down a piece of plastic, aren't we?

And I read the other day that Walmart is bringing back layaway programs where you can put a little bit down and for a little bit extra money because they're going to charge you some interest for holding it and you can make payments and you can now do the things that I used to do when I was a kid and have a layaway project. But if we save for something, it's of high value to us.

And that's how Christ said, looked at the kingdom, where we place our affection, our desire, our heart upon it, and we're willing to sell everything. We're willing to give up anything to pursue that kingdom. That's the point that he makes. The kingdom of God is also a government. It is a government of the world and of the universe. In Matthew 19, verse 27, the disciples who had sold everything they had to buy that pearl of great price came to him and wanted to know what they were going to get for it. In verse 27, Peter answered and said to him, see, we have left all and followed you.

Therefore, what shall we have? Peter was an American and he didn't even know it. What do I get for this? What do I get in return? He was a capitalist. And Jesus said, assuredly I say to you that in a regeneration, when the Son of Man sets on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also set on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The kingdom of God is a government. It is a world-ruling government. The Son of Man is going to set on a throne of glory.

He's made promises to His twelve immediate followers that they would rule over the tribes of Israel in the Millennial Kingdom of God on the earth, which means there will be a government. There will be a territory. There will be subjects. There will be a system of law. All of that that does constitute a modern literal kingdom today. All of those elements will be a part of that coming kingdom of God as well. Chapter 19 here, Christ also showed that this kingdom also imparts eternal life. In verse 29, He goes on to say, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name's sake shall receive a hundred fold and inherit eternal life.

So there is in the kingdom of God the promise of eternal life as well. On another occasion, a rich young ruler came to Christ and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And He said, keep the commandments, the laws of God. Eternal life is also part of that promise of the kingdom of God. He talks about a hundred fold for those receiving a hundred fold even for those that have left family and had to endure that in their own life. There is a cost and we know that. There is a cost to obeying God in the fullness of the gospel in today's world.

And that cost can sometimes seem very great and it can unfold over a period of time. But there is the promise of Jesus Christ that He will make it up a hundred fold. And that is in the spiritual realm now as well as in the future. Living within the teachings and the values of the kingdom of God today brings benefits.

It is a life-changing matter but it also has tangible benefits. Peace of mind, and as we're going to see, certainly peace of mind to deal with the challenges of life as it is today. That is real. And then ultimately eternal life. The message of the kingdom, as I've said, is something that Jesus Christ had on His lips all the time. It came back and back in His teaching. It's what He talked about. It's what He lived and breathed. It is the greatest gift for mankind.

In Acts chapter 3, we find that this kingdom was long anticipated, long sought for. In Acts chapter 3 and verse 19, verse 18, He says, Those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.

Every messenger that had come before Christ anticipated the time of the kingdom. It was foretold by every prophet, Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea. The famous prophecy in Isaiah chapter 2 that talks about mountains and hills as a symbol of government to which people are going to come. All pictures of Jesus Christ ruling the nations from Jerusalem for a thousand years during what is called the millennium.

The kingdom of God on this earth will be a time of true world peace and a time of spiritual awakening for all of the nations. And so many of the prophets spoke and foretold that. And this is what this particular section here promises, a time of restoration, a time of restoration of God's way to the earth. That is at the heart of the kingdom of God. This is what Jesus preached. This is what His church preached.

When we are reading here in Acts chapter 3, we're reading where the church is carrying this message on through the Acts of the Apostles and the church of the first century. That message went to the ends of the earth at that time and continues to be a central teaching of those servants of God who carry on this work of fulfilling the mission of preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Now, this is a thumbnail sketch, but before the kingdom comes in its fullness, because we have to admit, the kingdom of God is not here yet. I've been a student of history and many of you have as well. It doesn't take an in-depth study to realize that there have been noble efforts at peace. There have been utopian ideas and schemes that have come in every age of man, but none of them have produced the conditions of the kingdom of God.

In fact, if you want to be real honest about the prophecies from the book of Genesis all the way through to Revelation about the kingdom of God, you have to be real honest and admit that when that kingdom comes, it will come at the hand of God and not at the hand of man. No human can create the kingdom of God or the conditions of peace that these prophecies talk about.

That will have to come at the hand of God, the direct intervention of Jesus Christ into our modern world history. And so, before this comes, what must happen? The Bible contains a lot of prophecy. It's been said, and it is true. You can do the math on the Scriptures, but about one-third of the Bible is prophecy, most of which has not been fulfilled yet.

About one-third of this book. Now, that's a lot, which means two-thirds of it is not prophecy directly, but it's certainly very good-sound scriptural teaching from God about righteousness and how to live and instruction for you and I. But one-third of it, and most of it not having been fulfilled, is talking about prophecy of the kingdom of God and of a period of time just prior to that.

This is where it gets a little bit tricky at times for students of the Bible, students of prophecy, to manage and to handle the prophetic end-time scenarios and understanding and put it in its proper context with all of the promises of God regarding the kingdom of God. Because the Bible does show us and does focus on a period of time of human trouble prior to the end of this age and the ushering end of the kingdom of God when there will be a time of great distress.

Daniel 12, verse 1, describes it as a time of trouble unlike any that has ever appeared in all of history. In one verse in Daniel 12, it is summed up that there will be a time of trouble unlike any to have ever occurred in the days prior to the coming of the Son of Man. And in Matthew 24, verse 22, we'll turn and read that one. Jesus Christ Himself, the King of the Kingdom, said to His followers, that unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. And those days is the summation of this period called in the Bible the time of the end or the day of the Lord or the latter days.

Many different phrases that you find that are phrases for the end of time throughout the prophecies where mankind has the real potential for annihilation. Jesus said that unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened.

That's why there is a proper focus on a lot of bad times and a lot of bad part of the prophetic message of the Bible about a time of tribulation, of world trouble. But a Christian and one who is seeking the Kingdom of God has to take that imbalance, kind of lean into it, prepare for it to deal with it, but always with the hope of God's promise of salvation through it and on into the Kingdom of God when that time will come.

And to use that and to live that message in the hope that God intended it to be. When we look at the signs that Jesus gave of the end of the age, this section of Matthew 24 where we are is really a pivotal prophecy because in it the disciples very directly asked Jesus Christ the same question that so many people ask today and that we continue to ask in verse 3, Matthew 24.

As He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately saying, tell us when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age? They wanted to know that then. People want to know that today. And so Jesus went into a very detailed prophecy here in Matthew 24 where He did specifically mention a number of signs to look for. He talked about religious deception first of all. He talked about false Christ coming in His name and deceiving many. A great spiritual deception would fall upon the world. He talked about false messiahs. In verse 6 of Matthew 24, He talked about wars and rumors of war.

The world has not seen an age of peace yet and it is going to see a larger period of war before Jesus Christ. Christ does return. Wars and rumors of wars. International tensions. He goes on in verse 7. He talks about nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom. He talks about famine, pestilences, disease epidemics, and earthquakes in different places. Then He says all of these are the beginning of sorrows. I've written on this, spoken about it many, many times, and watched it over the years as have many of us here in this room to try to discern out of the headlines of our time what Jesus Christ talked about.

I've seen over a 40, 50-year period as I look at my life. The world reached a certain brink and then go back. Again, a time of tension increase and then fade into a time of relative peace. If we were to look at a period of time, let's say since the end of World War II to our present time, we would see one of the most interesting periods of human experience to lead us to a certain conclusion as to where we are right now in the year 2011 and what's in front of us.

As I've said at least twice already here in this presentation, we're at the end of an epoch. We're at a period of change. The Beyond Today program that will air tomorrow morning on WGN at 8.30 is entitled America on the Hinge of History. While it talks about the 10th anniversary of 9-11, it also shows that we are at a point of change, a hinge of history as historians talk about it, where things are evolving and changing in the world order. And America is writing that right now.

We're seeing this period of international tensions and crisis, a financial crisis that is reshaping the global economy. They just can't seem to get solved. Three years ago, we thought we'd seen the worst of it. This very month, three years ago in September of 2008 when Wall Street came crashing down, several banking houses disappeared and banks were on the verge of collapse. The federal government had to step in. And within one weekend, the whole system virtually came to a grinding halt. We swung out of that. But we haven't swung completely out, as we know. It still is lingering. And now Europe is having their own problems which is threatening to come back on this side of the Atlantic.

Whereas three years ago, our problems went over there. Now theirs are probably starting to come over here. And the whole financial market is beginning to change. We're seeing a revolution sweeping through the Middle East this year, the so-called Arab Spring. The potential of redrawing the map of the Middle East that we've all grown up looking at, at least having some vague awareness of where Egypt was or Libya or Jordan. But that was a map drawn in 1920 at the end of World War II. And that map was about to be redrawn in many ways with the changes that have taken place there and are continuing to roll out.

Just yesterday, they kicked out. The writers in Cairo, Egypt stormed the Israeli embassy and ransacked it. The Israeli ambassador to Egypt had to leave on a military plane with his family. And the peace that has been there for 20-some-odd years between those two nations is about to crumble in that particular relationship. And so we see that continuing to unfold as well and threatening to change the world order. Christ here talked about famine and disease problems and upset conditions.

The earthquakes is kind of a catch-all phrase that can include certainly an earthquake but other upset conditions. Someone sent me a link yesterday to a photo montage of the drought that is taking place in Texas. Now, most of us here in Indiana had a mini-drought this summer. I call it a mini-drought because we had a very wet spring. We had flooding all through the Midwest, the Ohio Valley, the Mississippi Valley. I was mowing my yard again until the 1st of July this year, but maybe once or twice since then.

We've had a mini-drought, but Texas is almost like Texas is under a curse with a drought that is sapping the vitality and the life out of people and the farmlands. The series of pictures that I saw were horrendous in terms of cracked earth, dried up reservoirs, dying cattle out in the farmlands of Texas, fires burning and destroying hundreds of homes.

It's almost like the state is under a curse, just as it itself brags and touts about all the jobs that they've created in the last half a dozen years and the economic boom they have. There are other problems underneath the surface there that are taking place.

Last year, some of you will remember, this was in October. I remember it very well. My wife was at school and her class had to go into an emergency tornado drill with all the class hunkering down against the wall. But there was a massive storm that began out on the west coast and swept across the United States from the Gulf to the Canadian border. By the time it got through us here in Indiana, it produced a day of hard rain and some tornadoes and some severe storms.

Then it passed on further through the east and up into the northeast and on out to sea. But it was a storm system that baffled the meteorologists. There was a picture of it on the internet. I made sure I clipped that. It showed this whole system moving all the way across the United States in just a few short days, creating tornadoes, snow, thunderstorms, heavy rains.

They called it a land-based hurricane that moved across the United States. They'd never seen anything like it in their time, watching the weather. And I thought, wow, something like that coming across our country at a critical point of the harvest, or at a critical point, disrupting so much of the economy, disrupting so much of life, what it could do to tip the country into a perilous condition. Christ knew what He was talking about. And it seems like in recent years, we have had so many little tripwires sitting there giving us warnings of earthquakes, hurricanes, upset weather conditions, flooding, to wake us up, to how perilous our modern world really is.

This is really at the heart of Christ's message in Matthew 24, to warn His disciples of the signs of the end of the age. It is not without merit that the Apostle Paul and Peter did write about the day of the Lord coming as a thief in the night, suddenly without warning. And yet we think we're safe, and we are safe, and by God's grace we are. But it doesn't take a lot of research to find out just how thin our margin of safety is in our highly sophisticated, modern technological world.

And we all love what we have, our cell phones, our internet, our cable television, our climate-controlled homes and buildings and malls and everything that we have, and a very good way of life. We should enjoy that. But a Christian, a citizen of the kingdom of God, one looking for that coming kingdom, appreciates that in the light of the promises of God as well as the warnings of God.

Christ went on to talk a great deal about other things. He talked about religious persecution. As he mentioned, he already talked about false teachings. This year saw another unfortunate religious figure make wild predictions about the coming of Christ. And they failed back in May. And so he recalibrated, and now he's got one for next month, October. I predict that he will be wrong again. We don't make predictions in the United Church of God about those things because we read the Scriptures and we're warned not to do that.

So we don't want to fall into the category of a false prophet in that sense. Now, the kingdom of God is not here, but the signs preceding that kingdom are here in today's headlines and reported virtually every evening on the cable news channels and becomes so tedious and frankly so discouraging that a lot of us decide, I don't like watching Fox News anymore, or so and so on television or whatever, because it's all bad news. And that's true. Well, I'm not one to stick my head completely in the sand, but again, it is important to understand what's going on and let those events shape us in terms of a worldview that points to God and to Jesus Christ and the promise and the hope of His kingdom.

That's what's important. Now, let me ask as I'm kind of moving to the ending of my presentation here in this first section. Let me take and ask a two-part question that really is taken from the Scriptures. What shall we do and what must we become? What shall we do and what must we become as we view this? I think that it's important that we have a personal family strategy that is based on spiritual endurance. In verse 13 of Matthew 24, Jesus said in the midst of His prophecy or the Olivet prophecy in Matthew 24 verse 13, He said, He who endures to the end shall be saved.

Christ's message of the kingdom of God, even in the midst of the bad news, was always on salvation. You endure to the end. You hang in there. You be faithful. Salvation is a promise. Endure to the end, you will be saved. There's always that promise and that hope. So it's a strategy of spiritual endurance. To endure the troubles ahead will require spiritual strength. There's no question. And that spiritual strength comes from Jesus Christ, who is the source of strength, the king of that coming kingdom.

We need that today. We need Christ as the king of the kingdom in our midst, in our lives at this time. How does that happen? How do we get to that point? Well, we go back to what Jesus said in His own first message there in Mark chapter 1 verses 14 and 15, where He said, repent and believe the gospel.

That's where we start. That has to happen. We have to change and accept the rules of the kingdom, the laws of the kingdom, to live by all 10 of those laws, not just nine, or not just eight and a half, or 7.35. It takes a full commitment to the laws of that kingdom, to the king of that kingdom, Jesus Christ Himself, because He said, repent, change, and believe the total, complete, holistic, practical, spiritual message of the kingdom of God.

Every one of us in this room lives a challenging life. We all have a story as to the challenges that we have to deal with every single day. Will my job hold out? Will I have enough money to make next month's payment? Will the C-word grab me within the next year? We all have a challenging life. There's no question about that. Every one of us in this room. No one, it seems, gets a totally free pass in life these days. None of us pass, go, and collect $200 every month. It just doesn't happen the way we would like it to happen.

We all know that. And yet, we put our faith and our hope and our trust in God's promise. Christ issued a summons in Mark 1 to the kingdom of God, and that summons requires a radical change in the way we live. It's a challenge to break all the cycles of life that tie us down and live differently by a better and a more gracious way. What shall we do? We should repent. We should change. We should bring our life into conformity with the kingdom of God. What should we be? What should we become? Well, let's let God's word answer that in the book of Titus 2. Chapter 2 and verse 11 of Titus.

We'll read through verse 14. For the grace of God that brings salvation, it says, has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, today's world, where we find ourselves. This is Paul's instruction, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. It appeared in Jesus Christ. And when we come to accept Him as our personal Savior, that's what we must do.

When we come to accept Him as our personal Savior, then we begin to live under the ways and the laws and the values of the kingdom of God, right where we live, in our little postage stamp-size spot of this earth that we live on. We're not going to change Indianapolis. We're not going to change Indiana. We're not going to change the United States. And by our efforts, bring on the kingdom of God. I can't change anybody but me. I've been a minister for 38 years. One of the most discouraging things to come to understand is, I can't change anybody but me.

That's hard for a preacher to come to. But it's the truth. I can't even change my wife. And she knows, and she'll tell you right up, she can't change me. This is my sphere of influence. This is where I know I've got to live the kingdom, and however that influences anyone else, then I'll give God the glory and the credit for that.

That's what Paul is talking about. We should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present age. Let's go on. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. God's people are a special people. The church of God is a special group. Jesus said it is because of the elect's sake that all flesh will be saved, that those days will be shortened.

Matthew 24, 22. The elect of God, the people of God, the church of God, they're a special people because they're zealous for good works and living as ambassadors for the kingdom of God, as emissaries of a kingdom whose builder and maker is God, a kingdom that is coming to this earth, but represented now in the lives of those who are called according to His purpose. And that's why we in the United Church of God have one strategy, to preach the gospel of the kingdom, which is what Matthew 24 and verse 14 says will be done, to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God as a witness before the coming of the end, before the coming of Jesus Christ.

We're called to righteousness now. We're called to preach the gospel. We're called to prepare to rule with Christ when He appears, to bring that kingdom in its fullness. And that message is the most important message of our day. It's why it is worth every commitment and every resource that we muster and measure to teach it, live it, and preach it in this day and age.