Wednesday, October 12 | The Kingdom of God is Now
Read: Luke 4:16-21
“Today this has been fulfilled.” In the book of Luke, Jesus begins his ministry by reading from the scroll of Isaiah. This reading from Isaiah 61 is in the third part of the book of Isaiah. It’s the part of Isaiah where God is telling Israel of the day when they will experience complete restoration. God speaks of a New Creation, of a day when everything they’ve lost will be restored, where those they’ve lost will come home. It is speaking of a day “yet to come.” This part of Isaiah represented the future hope of the people of Israel.
When Jesus read those words, and then announced that in His coming, those words had been fulfilled, it was shocking! It was Jesus’ way of letting people know that His coming changed everything. That His coming started the process of undoing all that had become disrupted in the fall: that shalom was breaking in.
Jesus’s life demonstrated the reality that the invitation to God’s Kingdom was not simply about something we believe in our heads or feel in our hearts. To participate in God’s Kingdom means to do work with our hands! To bring about healing, wholeness, and flourishing for ALL!
So when Jesus gave the Great Commission and told the disciples to “teach them to obey everything I had commanded you,” He was talking about everything He had said and demonstrated about what life in God’s Kingdom is supposed to be like! He wasn’t talking about inviting people just to pray a prayer so they could go to heaven when they die - He was inviting them to join the revolution!
How does this reality (that God’s Kingdom is not in the future, but has already started) impact the way you think about the ways in which you serve?