Christ in Luke

It was a Sunday afternoon in Valdivia in Chile. The date was May 22, 1960. The locals were playing football and cooking and enjoying music.

And the weekend, when a magnitude 9.6 earthquake struck. It was the biggest earthquake in recorded history. Up to 6,000 people lost their lives.

Southern Chile was flooded with tsunami waves up to 25 meters tall. Hours later, Hawaii, 10,000 kilometers away from Chile, was hit with 10 meter high waves. 12 hours later, New Zealand was hit, then Australia, then Japan.

The whole Pacific world felt the effects of the biggest earthquake in recorded history. And it all came from one spot. The epicenter, Valdivia, Chile, on a Sunday afternoon.

Almost 2,000 years earlier, on a Saturday morning, in the small town of Nazareth in Galilee, the local Jews were gathering in synagogue to pray, to worship, to read the scriptures.

And a rabbi who had been making waves recently was back in his hometown for a few days only. And on this Saturday morning in synagogue, he found himself giving the weekly address.

He stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. To set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it to the attendant and sat down.

The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. And Jesus began by saying to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. That moment was the epicenter of a movement that changed the world.

But this movement was not a wave of destruction and death that plunged the Pacific world into devastation. Jesus' kingdom transforms the world in goodness, truth and beauty by the power of love and by God's spirit making the world right again.

And it all comes from this moment right here, the epicenter of the earthquake of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Did you know that? It comes from this place.

We're three weeks into our two year long project called Christ in Scripture. Lord willing, and we do have to say that because it's an ambitious project.

Lord willing, we're going to spend a week in every single one of the 66 books of the Bible, seeing how it points us to the person of Jesus and his life, death, resurrection and ascension.

This month of January, we're in The Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Week one was the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Last week was the Gospel of Mark, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve.

Next week is the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. But this week, we're in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is the Spirit-anointed epicenter of the Earthquaking Kingdom coming on Earth.

So each week of this series, we've given a 30,000 foot overview of the Gospel. We've started big and then we shrunk down small to one passage that in some way captures the point of that Gospel and what it says about who Jesus is.

And I think that structure of starting big and then moving small makes a lot of sense for Matthew and Mark. Matthew has an introduction and then five big blocks of teaching, five discourses and then a conclusion. That's the structure.

And the Gospel of Mark has three very clear acts, firstly in Galilee and then in Jerusalem and then the road between, act one, two and three. But Luke is different.

The Gospel of Luke, I think, doesn't have that same type of clear overarching structure.

Instead, the Gospel of Luke is more like an earthquake with an epicenter and then ripples that play out over the course of the book and even into the sequel to Luke's Gospel, which is the Book of Acts.

And we see this kind of epicenter earthquake effect in the Book of Acts in verse eight of chapter one.

Jesus says to his disciples, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

So the pattern of the Book of Acts is from the upper room to by the end in Acts chapter 28, Paul is preaching the Gospel in Rome. So truly the Gospel has gone from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and is on its way to the ends of the earth.

And the shape of Luke's Gospel is the same. It begins with an epicenter and then it plays out, the earthquake plays out as the Kingdom of God comes.

Luke begins his Gospel with these words in chapter 1.

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.

With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, Most Excellent Theophilus. Theophilus was the sponsor, the patron of this Gospel.

So that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. Luke writes his Gospel so that we may know. In the Bible, knowledge is interactive relationship.

Knowledge is not building up a mental encyclopaedia of facts. It is to actually relate to something in an interactive way.

Luke says he wrote his Gospel and by extension the Sequel, the Book of Acts, so that we may have an interactive relationship with God and with his Kingdom.

So this morning, as we seek to see Christ in Luke, how this Gospel points us to Jesus, we have to look at the epicentre of the earthquake of the Kingdom in Luke 4.

And then we have to follow those rippling waves as they play themselves out throughout the Gospel of Luke. And we do this so that we may know, so that we may have interactive relationship with King Jesus and with his Kingdom.

Not only to build up a mental encyclopaedia, but for relationship.

So three things that we need to know about the Kingdom of God from the Gospel of Luke. The Kingdom is inside out, the Kingdom is upside down, and the Kingdom is now and not yet. The Kingdom is inside out, upside down, and now and not yet.

Firstly, the Kingdom is inside out. The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims is for the renewal of the whole world. In fact, the cosmos.

But it starts with the renewal of the individual and with the individual's heart. The Kingdom comes from the inside out, and then it changes the world. We read in verse 18.

Jesus says, The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me. We can just pause there before we work through the rest of the passage.

This word anointed, to be anointed, is to have some oil that is highly fragrant, this really aromatic, fragrant smelling oil put on a person, place or thing that marks out that person, place or thing as an overlap between heaven and earth.

That's what anointing is. So in the Old Testament, we see that people, places and things are anointed with fragrant oil to mark them as a heaven and an earth overlap. So Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me.

We could say Jesus is the anointed one, the one who has been anointed. And the word for that in Greek is Christos, from which we get Christ. And the Hebrew version of that is Messiah.

Jesus says, he is the anointed one, the Messiah. And to really understand the insane implications of what he's saying, we have to follow this theme, not forwards into the Gospel of Luke, but backwards right back to page one of the Bible.

So Genesis chapter one, God creates the world, he creates humankind in his image, and humanity are made to rule and reign over the earth under God, and to be fruitful and multiply.

And God's vision was that all of humanity together, being the image of God, would bring God's blessing to the whole cosmos.

That the Garden of Eden in the east, which means delight, Eden means delight, the Garden of Eden would spread and grow and take over the whole world with the goodness of God.

Now, that's Genesis one and two, but then you turn the page to Genesis three, and we see that humans don't want to do that with God.

They try and accomplish God's purpose without him, and so rather than the blessing of God spreading to the whole world, the sin of humankind spreads.

It says in like Genesis five in the Noah flood story, which is funny that Jaz mentioned that this morning on such a day like today, that violence had filled the whole world.

God's heart was that blessing would fill the world, but humans have filled the world with violence.

And so God chooses one man from all of the nations, a man called Abram, and he says you will be a nation, and that nation, which becomes the nation of Israel, will be the vehicle of God's blessing coming to the nations.

But then you read the rest of the Old Testament, and Israel failed to do that task. Rather than bringing God's blessing to the nations, they turn in on themselves and turn away from God.

So again, the Old Testament gets narrower in its hope, and the hope of the Old Testament comes down to one person, not all of humanity, not the nation of Israel, one person who is referred to as the Messiah in Hebrew, which means the anointed one,

the one person from within the nation of Israel who will fulfill all of God's promises and bring the blessing of God to all nations. That's the person that Isaiah 61 is referring to.

And now Jesus in the Gospel of Luke quotes Isaiah 61, and he says, the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me. Jesus says, he is the Christ. He is the person that the entire Old Testament comes down to.

He is the one man through whom God is gonna bring blessing to all nations. And then we see this theme of the kingdom coming down to Jesus and then playing out from Jesus. We see this at the end of Luke's Gospel.

Jesus said to his disciples, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. That's the Old Testament.

It's about Jesus. It all comes down to Jesus. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

He told them, this is what is written, the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to what? All nations beginning in Jerusalem.

That's the storyline that the Book of Acts picks up, that the entire Old Testament comes down to one man, Jesus, the anointed one, and from Jesus, it spreads out to all nations. This is the kind of pattern of Luke's Gospel.

And so as you read the Gospel of Luke, which I hope you've had a chance to do this week, you see that wherever Jesus goes, the Kingdom of God comes with him.

Jesus brings the kingdom everywhere he goes, through his teaching, his miracles, his casting out demons. Everything Jesus does brings the Kingdom of God. The whole Old Testament comes down to him.

And then there's this funny little story where Jesus sends out the 12. Do you remember that? He sends them out.

He gives them authority to continue his work. And then a few pages later, Jesus sends out the 12 times 6, the 72. You can see the kingdom is growing again from Jesus because the kingdom is inside out.

That was always God's intention. Right back from Genesis 1, his intention was that his humanity would bring his blessing to the whole world.

And when we failed to do that, Jesus fulfilled it for us in order that as our heart is transformed, we would be transformed from the inside out and partake in his kingdom work going to all nations. I was making pizza dough a couple of months ago.

And pizza dough is very easy. This recipe was flour plus water plus salt plus yeast. So I had all the ingredients ready to go.

And then I had the bowl and I put them all together. And I was kneading the bread and it's fun. Kneading bread is fun.

And I got this perfect looking piece of dough, just round and beautiful. And I set it to the side and then came over here to the recipe book to see what to do next. And I noticed the yeast still sitting on the table.

There's no yeast in the dough. So I thought, well, I'll just add it and then re-knead. So then I took the yeast and put it in the bowl and kneaded it again.

I'm thinking, I love kneading bread. This is so fun. I'm just working this yeast all the way through the dough.

So we made our pizzas and put it in the oven and the yeast did not do its thing. It didn't grow at all. You could still see it.

Yeast like flaky little gross yeast. And I learned a profound lesson in that moment, that transformation must be from the inside out, not from the outside in. Cuz I tried to get this yeast into the bread from the outside and it did not work.

Do not try it, it doesn't work. But if I had to put the yeast in at the start, woven from the inside out, that yeast, as Jesus often uses this image, would have leavened the whole dough.

And that dough would have risen in the heat and we would have had beautiful pizzas, but we had terrible pizzas instead. Transformation doesn't work from the outside in. It must be from the inside out.

Jesus says in Luke 12, be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Throughout the Gospels, Luke, Jesus, is constantly coming into conflict with the Pharisees.

And we see here that the essence of his criticism of that group is hypocrisy. That word appears multiple times on Jesus' lips throughout the Gospels. Now, when we call someone a hypocrite, what we mean today is an external, external divide, right?

So, I say, don't eat a cookie from the cookie jar, and then I go and eat a cookie from the cookie jar. There's an external, external divide. But when Jesus uses the word hypocrite, he's referring to an external, internal divide.

And that's exactly what the Pharisees did. So, the Pharisees would give the perfect amount of money, exactly what the law commanded. They would do all the right things according to the law.

They would even take their mint. Imagine this, if we have a mint plant at home, it's not doing very well, but maybe it'll do better in this rain. They tithe one-tenth of their mint.

That's how precise they are on the outside. But Jesus said, on the inside, they are full of greed and wickedness and evil.

He calls them hypocrites because there's a divide between the actions of their body on the outside and the attitude of their heart on the inside. Jesus calls that the yeast of the Pharisees. Transformation cannot come from the outside in.

It must be from the inside out. I was thinking about this idea a couple of months ago. I was feeling contempt, feeling angry, and I wanted to not be angry.

So I remembered that Jesus talks about contempt in the Sermon on the Mount. So I went to Matthew 5 and Jesus says, you've heard that it was said, you shall not murder and anyone who murders is subject to judgment.

But I tell you, anyone who is angry with a brother or sister is subject to judgment. And as I came to this passage, feeling contempt in my heart for whatever was going on in life, I was so depressed because Jesus lifts the bar from murder to anger.

If we do the same thing with lust, Jesus lifts the bar from adultery to lustful thoughts in your heart. He lifts the bar from keeping our promises to being integrous and non-manipulative with our words.

And so I came to the Sermon on the Mount, wanting some kind of command, like Jesus, tell me what to do to get rid of contempt.

But when you come to the words of Jesus from the outside in, it is bad news because it's just another legalistic weight on our shoulders.

And in that moment, I had this realization of the way that God intends to transform us is from the inside out, that He doesn't drop a weight of commands on our shoulders and tell us to obey them. He renews our heart by the power of His Spirit.

And just like a yeast that leavens through the whole dough, that transformed heart will work itself out in our behavior. So, I had the direction wrong.

I was coming at the words of Jesus from the outside in, when the hope of the Gospel is transformation from the inside out.

And as you read the Gospel of Luke, you can see that His transforming work is centered on His death, on the cross when He was crucified for us.

And then when He rose again, when He gave the Spirit, He made our hearts new, in order that the Kingdom might come from the inside out and form a community of people, that's us right now, the Church, and that the Church would spread the Kingdom by

the grace of God to the ends of the Earth, because the Kingdom is inside out, not outside in. the grace of God to the ends of the Earth, because the Kingdom is inside out, not outside in.

The Kingdom is inside out, and number two, the Kingdom is upside down. This is probably quite familiar language.

We often talk about the upside down Kingdom, that the world and its values are upside down, relative to the values of God, which really, I think, I said this a few weeks ago, really the world is upside down, and the Kingdom is right side up, but it

depends on what side you're looking at. This idea of the upside down Kingdom is present in all four Gospels, but especially prevalent in the Gospel of Luke.

In verse 18, Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set free the oppressed.

The Kingdom of God is upside down. Remember this passage is the epicenter of the earthquake. And then the Gospel of Luke shows the ripple effects of these words.

So how does this theme play out? How does the upside down Kingdom play out across Luke? I think one of the ways is around the table.

You know, the Gospel of Luke records Jesus eating meals more than any other Gospel. In fact, Robert Carras, who wrote a commentary on Luke, says in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.

He eats a lot in the Gospel of Luke. And what we see is, in this culture, to eat with someone is not just to consume nutritional things in their presence, but it is to associate with them, to build relationship with someone.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, eats with two distinct types of people, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. That's the top of the social hierarchy, the ones who were thought to be close to God.

And he eats with what Luke calls tax collectors and sinners. That is the bottom of the social hierarchy, people far away from God. And we read this in Luke 5 verse 27, or verse 30.

Jesus' first meal out of many in the Gospel of Luke. The conclusion at the end is, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to Jesus' disciples, why do you eat with them? Tax collectors and sinners.

Later in Luke, a sinful woman anoints Jesus' feet with perfume and cries on his feet and dries them with her hair.

And the Pharisees in verse 39, who had invited him, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner. That's the way you have to read it. Sinner.

That's the heart of the Pharisees. Later on in chapter 15, it says, all the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to hear him.

In verse 2, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. And so the Pharisees conclude, Jesus is obviously not the Messiah. He's obviously not God in human flesh because he hangs with them.

The Pharisees think we are God's people. We are like the in crowd. If God were to come in human flesh, He would come and dine with us and hang with us and affirm all the things that we believe.

But Jesus comes and he turns the world upside down when he brings his kingdom. He eats with tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees don't know the kingdom.

They don't know the heart of God and the kingdom that Jesus brings. Even John the Baptist didn't know. Remember, John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin.

We see his birth story at the start of Luke. And at one point in Luke's Gospel, the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist, sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he really truly is the Messiah or if there's somebody else coming.

And I think that's a fair question because John in that moment is starving in a prison, awaiting his imminent decapitation.

And he's probably thinking, I really thought Jesus was the Messiah, but if he was the Messiah, and if the Kingdom of God really was coming, I would not be about to lose my life. I would not be starving in this prison.

And so Jesus says, verse 22, go back and report to John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Jesus says the kingdom is here, but it's upside down. And even John didn't know that. The Pharisees didn't know that.

Jesus brings an upside down kingdom, but that's exactly the way he said it would be in the epicenter of the earthquake.

He says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set free the oppressed.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the Lord don't know this kingdom. They don't have an interactive relationship with God in his kingdom because they think it's coming, looking like something else. But it's the upside down kingdom.

They hear Jesus list and maybe they think, oh, that's not the kingdom of God. I'm not poor, oppressed, prisoner or blind. But I think Jesus would say, the kingdom is upside down.

You are poor if you haven't experienced God's abundant gift of grace. You are a prisoner of the power of sin that leads to death. You are blind if you can't see the glory of God in the face of Christ.

And you are oppressed if you do the will of the evil one. But Jesus brings his kingdom precisely to those kinds of people and not to the top of the social hierarchy.

Jesus says in chapter five, verse 31, in the conclusion of his first meal in Luke, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The kingdom is here for those types of people.

Not because they are those types of people, not because they are poor, because they are prisoners, but because the kingdom of God is upside down and it comes for that type of person, because of the grace of God.

You know, Hamish and Andy, you know, they popularized the phrase, must be nice. Hamish and Andy say, you say must be nice in recognition of someone who has the good life. So, whoa, another overseas holiday, must be nice.

Or, whoa, must be nice, the new latest iPhone. It's a recognition of someone who is experiencing the good life. I think must be nice is a perfect modern Australian translation of blessed are, as in the beatitudes.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. In Matthew 5 and also in Luke 6, Jesus looking at his disciples said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the son of man. We call these the Beatitudes, Luke 6 and Matthew 5.

Blessed are. And you might have heard it said from someone who looks like me standing in a place like this one, reading from a book like this one, that they're Beatitudes, Attitudes to be, the Beatitudes.

So therefore, the lesson from Jesus' Beatitudes is, go be poor so that you will receive the kingdom of God. Go weep so that you will be comforted. Go do these things, be these things in order for the kingdom of God to come.

But respectfully, that is the opposite of Jesus' point in the Beatitudes.

His whole point is to say that those who are poor and are needy and are weeping are the ones who have experienced the kingdom because of the grace of God, not because they have put themselves in that position.

The Beatitudes are turning our value systems upside down because this is the upside down kingdom. And so Jesus says, must be nice, you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Must be nice, you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied in the kingdom. Must be nice, you who weep now, for you will laugh in the kingdom.

So can I encourage you if that list of things in the Beatitudes or in Jesus' words in Luke 4, if that resonates with you in any way, the kingdom of God is at hand in your life. We think it comes in the lovely, nice ways in our life.

We think it comes in our high points, and maybe it does, but more so the kingdom of God comes to us in our low points. As we receive it, as we realize our need for God, the kingdom of God floods our life.

The kingdom is inside out, the kingdom is upside down, and the kingdom is now and not yet. This language is also, I think, quite familiar to us, that Jesus has brought the kingdom now, but it's also still coming.

And this is core to understanding the kingdom that Jesus brings in verse 18 in the epicenter. Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me. The kingdom is inside out.

To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free, the kingdom is upside down. And then Jesus says to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

The kingdom is now and not yet. When Jesus says he's come to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, he's quoting Isaiah 61.

And Isaiah 61 is looking back to Leviticus 25 to the year of Jubilee in Israel's law that Moses gave to them through, that God gave Israel through Moses. Every seven years, they would have a Sabbath year. So they let the ground lie fallow.

They don't sow anything. They trust in the provision of God. And then in Leviticus 25, it says every seven times seven years, meaning, what, how many is that?

49. But the year after, therefore, 50. Every 50th year is the year of Jubilee.

And in the year of Jubilee, Leviticus 25 says, all debt is cleared. All land returns to its original owners. All slaves are set free.

This is a once in a lifetime, probably maybe twice if you were lucky and lived that long. Once in a lifetime celebration of the freedom of God, the year of Jubilee.

Now, there's no evidence anywhere in the Old Testament that Israel actually kept the year of Jubilee. We never, I mean, maybe they did, but we never hear about it.

And so in exile, in that part of Israel's story where they were taken from the promised land to Assyria and Babylon, they were reckoning with what the year of Jubilee could mean for people who don't have a land.

And they came to conceive of the year of Jubilee as pointing forward to the messianic age, to the day when God's anointed one would come.

And so when Jesus comes and says he has come to bring the year of Jubilee, he is proclaiming the year of Jubilee, it is that the Kingdom of God is here now.

We read in Luke 8 verse 1, Jesus traveled from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. We say all the time here at NorthernLife that the kingdom was the main thing that Jesus was talking about.

The main topic that he taught about and thought about was the Kingdom of God. He went everywhere telling people about the Kingdom of God.

And then over the course of Luke's Gospel, he makes his way from Galilee in the north, proclaiming the kingdom everywhere, all the way down to Jerusalem in the south. And then we read this.

This is the last story before Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Luke 19 verse 11.

While the crowds were listening to this, Jesus went on to tell them a parable because he was near Jerusalem, and the people thought that the kingdom was going to appear at once. So all of the crowds are thinking, this is it.

The Messiah has come to Jerusalem. This is the moment when he's going to, like Gandalf the Great, pull off his gray clothes and he'll be clothed in white. He's going to lead us to overthrow the Roman oppressors.

This is the kingdom coming moment. Except in Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem, not on a white stallion like Gandalf, but on a donkey. He turns the kingdom upside down.

Back in Luke 17, I know there's a lot of scripture. I'm not apologizing, I'm just telling you, there is a lot. We're just following this kingdom throughout the Gospel of Luke.

Once on being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, the coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed.

Nor will people say, here it is or there it is, because the kingdom of God is in your midst. The Pharisees, the crowds, they were looking forward to that military victory that Jesus was going to bring.

But Jesus says, open your eyes, look around, the kingdom of God is here. Jesus brings the kingdom into the present. That's exactly what he said in the epicentre of the earthquake.

He has come to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour, the gospel of the kingdom. The kingdom had come in and around them. Now that, the epicentre is quoting Isaiah 61, right?

And Isaiah as a whole is really important for the background of Luke's Gospel. And a couple of Bible scholars have studied in detail every word of Isaiah and they have summarised that Isaiah has seven marks of the kingdom.

Isaiah, the book of the prophet, is looking forward to the coming kingdom of God. And when that kingdom comes, it will be marked by these seven things. Salvation, justice, peace, healing, community, joy and the presence of God.

This is what it means when the kingdom of God comes. And when you look at the Gospels, is that not exactly what Jesus brings? He brings salvation, he brings joy, he brings the presence of God, he brings healing and he brings community.

The kingdom was now. When Jesus was walking around, the kingdom was now. You might be familiar with heaven and earth, depicted like this.

So, heaven is God's realm, earth is this realm. And then the idea that Jesus brings heaven to earth. So there's an overlap.

Now the scriptures also talk about this age and the age to come. Meaning we could kind of twist it sideways, right? The idea of Jesus bringing the kingdom now is he brings the future kingdom of heaven into the present.

So now that there is an overlap. And when Jesus came the first time at Christmas, he was born, he lived, died, rose again. That was this moment here.

Jesus inaugurating the kingdom. That means launching the kingdom on earth. The kingdom has come.

And now that the kingdom has come, we can live lives of salvation, justice, peace, healing, community, joy, and experience the presence of God. But when you look at this diagram, we still, oops, spoiler alert, let's go back one.

We still live in the earth part at the same time. And so even though the kingdom is now, the kingdom is still not yet. Now, let's go to the next one.

We wait for Jesus to come back again. And when he comes back again, heaven and earth will be perfectly united. And so we now experience salvation, justice, peace, healing, community, joy, and the presence of God.

But in this now and not yet, in this tension period, we also experience bondage, injustice, anxiety, suffering, loneliness, weeping and the absence of God. We experience both of these things at the same time.

And as we experience these things, Jesus teaches us to pray that the kingdom of God would come, that He would bring the fullness of that kingdom into the present, and that heaven and earth would perfectly line up.

And He will do that when He returns one day. Jesus taught us to... did Jesus teach us?

John teaches us in Revelation to pray, Come, Lord Jesus, come. Bring the fullness of your kingdom. You might remember I quoted that verse, Come, Lord Jesus, come, about five weeks ago at the end of our Let Me Tell You About Jesus series.

And I preached morning and night, the same message. And our night service starts at 5 p.m. And it was a long sermon, and it was toward the end of the sermon where I said it.

So it was probably 620, where I was saying these words that we long for the kingdom to come, Come, Lord Jesus, come. And on that night, some kilometers away in Bondi, that happened.

And so I was at home watching the news with this whole Come, Lord Jesus, Come sermon in my mind.

And just like, it's so real that we live in this tension, that we live experiencing salvation, justice, peace, healing, community, joy in the presence of God. Praise God. We receive those gifts.

But we also experience bondage, injustice, anxiety, suffering, loneliness, weeping, and the absence of God. And often we experience them at the same time. And so going back to that final diagram, the kingdom has come.

But we live in the overlap and we wait for it to come fully. And we pray, come Lord Jesus, come, that he would bring his kingdom.

Luke wants us to know the kingdom. He wrote his Gospel so that we might know. And that is not only to have a mental encyclopaedia, but to have an interactive relationship with God.

We have to know that the kingdom of God is inside out. It works from the transformation of the heart outwards. The kingdom is upside down.

It comes for the poor and the needy and the oppressed. And the kingdom is now and not yet. It is here now.

But it's not here fully and we wait for it to come. So the earthquake has started. Jesus has come.

The epicenter of his mission. He stated what he came to do. And then he did it.

The kingdom came and it grows and grows and grows over the course of the Gospel of Luke with a climactic moment in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But then the kingdom keeps growing because Luke, unlike the other Gospels, has a sequel.

And in the book of Acts, the kingdom continues to expand and expand and expand from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And we live in Acts chapter 29. The book of Acts has 28 chapters.

So you flip the page on to Acts chapter 29. That's the part of the story that we live in. The kingdom of God still coming on earth as it is in heaven until the ends of the earth, no God and His kingdom have an interactive relationship with Him.

And we get to be a part of that kingdom.

So I pray that through the Gospel of Luke and through this series, through these next two years as we embark on the Christ in Scripture project, that we would know not only in a mental encyclopaedia, but we would have an interactive relationship with

God and with His kingdom. The kingdom is inside out, upside down, and now and not yet. And we get to be a part of that. So let me pray.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you took on flesh. The eternal son became one of us and brought the kingdom to earth. We know that without you, God, we are without hope in this world.

We're under the power of sin, but we thank you and we bless you, Lord, that you became like us, and you died for us and rose again to set us free from that power, to make us alive, to give us new hearts, to pour out your spirit in us.

And that's true of every one of us who just receives the gift by faith. We thank you, Lord, that you want to bring your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, and you invite us to be a part of that.

So we pray that you would help us to know our part to play in this inside out, upside down, and now and not yet kingdom. In Jesus name, Amen.

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