Sermon series: THE DOCTRINE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
THE KINGDOM OF GOD...ENTRANCE IS BY REPENTANCE

Luke 3:3-15
"And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins: As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias, the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.
And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these to raise up children unto Abraham.
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
He answered and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.
Then came also the publicans to be baptized, and said unto him. Master, what shall we do?
And he saith unto them. Exact no more than that which is appointed you.
And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.
And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not."

Matthew 4:23
"From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Luke 5:31-32
"And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

2 Peter 3:9
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

It is related that Michelangelo, the famous Italian sculptor, painter, and poet, once stood before a great block of marble that had been rejected by builders and cast aside. As he stood there with eyes staring straight at the marble, a friend approached and asked what

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he was looking at.
"An angel," came the reply.
He saw what the mallet, and chisel, and patient skill could do with that rejected stone. He set to work and produced one of his great masterpieces.
The Divine Sculptor sees possibilities that no mortal can see...He looks upon the chaotic, misshapen, and sin-ruined lives of men and women...and He sees a saint!
With His infinite grace and eternal mercy...through forgiveness and love and the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit...He can take the ugly and make it beautiful, the rejected become accepted, the unprofitable become profitable...and sinner becomes a member of God's kingdom!
Myra Brooks Welch once wrote:
"Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
A dollar, a dollar...now two, only two...
Two dollars and who'll make it three?
"Three dollars, once, three dollars twice...
Going for three'...but no...
From the room far back a grey haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening up all the strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As sweet as the angels sing.
"The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said; "What am I bid for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars—and who'll make it two?"
Two thousand, and who'll make it three?
Three thousand once, and three thousand twice—
And —going, and gone' said he.
"The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand—
What changed its worth?" The man replied,
‘The touch of the Master's hand.’
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and torn with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.
A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game...and he travels on,
He's going once, and he's going twice,
He is going, and almost gone!
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd,
Never quite understand...
The worth of a soul, and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand."

"And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to re-

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pentance."
During the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, some had that unique opportunity of sharing in redemption's thrilling story!
Mary...who became the human carriage to usher the Messiah of prophecy into a world which did not want Him! Blessed among women as all the time she was; unblemished in soul and body like the paschal lamb as she was; like the paschal lamb also she was set apart to be a divine sacrifice, and to have a sword thrust through her heart. Mary must have passed through many dark and dreadful days when all she had given her to lean upon would seem like a broken reed. Blessed among women, yes, but required to participate in bringing to birth a child when still unmarried...that was shameful! Great is the mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief...and Mary shared in that grief from His cradle to His Cross!
His disciples! Sometimes loving, sometimes downright unbearable, and frequently very selfish...finally abandoning the Christ at His trial. These men lived and eat and walked with Jesus. That was a privileged position in history!
And there was the man who carried the cross of Jesus. His name was Simon of Cyrene. How singular that this man of Cyrene, this stranger in Jerusalem, should play so conspicuous a part in its most historic deed! How arresting is it that this man, going up with joyous heart and shining eyes, should be suddenly thrust into this tragedy. Ah! But what a matchless honor was conferred upon him when that Roman press-gang compelled him to carry the cross of Jesus!
And then...John the Baptist! The prophet, the man from the desert, whose clothes were different and his food was locust and wild honey! But he had the joyous task of proclaiming the coming ministry of Jesus Christ. He was chosen to baptize the Christ in the waters of baptism to fulfill all righteousness.
He begins his striking ministry with these words:
REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!
Of John the Baptist, Jesus said:
"Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist."
In six brief months, the young prophet of the wilderness had become the center to which all the land went forth. We see Pharisees and Sadducees, soldiers and publicans, enthralled by his ministry; the Sanhedrin forced to investigate his claims; the petty potentates of Palestine caused to tremble on their thrones; while he has left a name and an influence that will never cease out of the world.
He was ordained to be "the clasp of two covenants." In him Judaism reached its highest embodiment, and the Old Testament found its noblest exponent.
History marked the day, and John's sonorous and penetrating voice issued the clarion call...REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!
In F. B. Meyer's book entitled: JOHN THE BAPTIST, he describes the scene thusly:

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"It was as though a spark had fallen on dry tinder. The tidings spread with wonderful rapidity that in the wilderness of Judea one was to be met who recalled the memory of the great prophets, and whose burning eloquence was of the same order as of Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Instantly people began to flock to him from all sides. There went out of him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan. The neighborhood suddenly became black with hurrying crowds—as Klondike, when the news of the discovery of gold began to spread! From lip to lip, the tidings sped of a great leader, and preacher, who had suddenly appeared."
John's message had three points:
(1) Repent! (2) The Kingdom of God is at hand! (3) Flee from the wrath to come!
In our previous lesson, we learned that the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God are terms used interchangeably throughout the gospel but have the exact same meaning. There is no reason to attach a different meaning to these terms. The combination "kingdom of heaven" is the literal translation of Hebrew "malkuth shamaim."
Matthew's almost invariable use of the term "kingdom of heaven" is connected with the fixed Jewish linguistic usage in which the name of God was usually avoided.
To the Jewish listener of John's day, the "Kingdom of God" meant the re-establishment of the Theocracy, and a return to those great days in the history of His people when God Himself was Lawgiver and King. It was that day when Palestine would be free from oppression, Jerusalem would be the capitol of the world. To the Jews, it was the fulfillment of the Golden Age!
But the kingdom to which John referred to in his preaching was spiritual, not physical! He was announcing the coming of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, who would give His life on Calvary for the redemption of man's sins. It was the kingdom of Christ's spiritual rule within the lives and hearts of men and women, boys and girls. Not a kingdom of castles, buildings, horses and tanks, lands or countries...but a kingdom wherein the King of kings and Lord of lords comes to reign within the heart bringing peace, righteousness and joy in the Holy Spirit!
When John and Jesus proclaimed...THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND, it was the announcement of an all-inclusive reality in the history of salvation. These words summarized all that had been the object of Old Testament prophecy and of Israel's expectation of the future from the oldest times.
This appears clearly enough from the words that Mark adds to the commencement of the New Testament kerygma: ‘the time is fulfilled.'
"The time," i.e., the great turning point of history, promised by God Himself for the full revelation of His Kingly glory; the time for the liberation of His people and the punishment of His enemies. It was the time that would bring the consummation and which had reached its fullness.
The coming of the kingdom is pre-eminently the idea of the kingly self-assertion of God, of His coming to the world in order to reveal His royal majesty, power and right.

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REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND! God has burst into history in the person of Jesus Christ. Satan's domain has been invaded, man's sins have been propitiated, death has been conquered, heaven has been opened to whosoever will! The Holy Spirit has been given to empower and the kingdom of God has become available to all who will let Jesus Christ be Lord and Master of their lives!
Luke 17:20-21
"And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said: "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you."
The marvelous message of the Bible is that King Jesus desires to set up His kingdom of joy and righteousness and peace within our heart.
The preaching of John and Jesus started from one valid basic assumption...MAN IS A SINNER, far from God, blinded by sin, and at total enmity against God!
The gospel starts from the idea of the cleft existing between God and man, and the great moral distress in which man finds himself before God. This distress goes so deep and is so all-overpowering because of man's guilt before God, owing to which man with his entire existence, runs the risk of being delivered to the divine judgment.
Jesus said:
"He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already; because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 3:18-21)
The principal terms employed in the Old Testament with reference to sin may be grouped into four classes:
(1) deviation from the right way, going astray
(2) The guilt of the sinner (3) rebellion against a superior, treachery or infidelity (turning to idols)
(4) the characteristics of sin, such as its badness, violence, trouble, vanity, worthlessness, senselessness.
Man's twisted concepts of sin suggests: (1) someone else is the blame! Said Adam...the woman thou gavest me..."
2) We are just innocent bystanders! Aaron...I put the gold in the fire and there came out this calf! (3) Man's predicament is the consequence of innocent ignorance, not culpable evil. Man is by nature good, and hence perfectible, that reason supplied with enough information is capable of reaching and will always reach the ultimate truth; that truth once known, will always be believed and acted upon, and that vice is error.
BUT THERE ARE SEVEN SIMPLE FACTS ABOUT SIN THAT EVERYBODY OUGHT TO KNOW:
(1) Sin earns wages; (2) Sin pays wages; (3) Sin insists on paying. You may be quite willing to let the account go, but sin always insists on paying.

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(4) Sin pays its wages in kind. Sin against the body brings results in the body. Sin against persons results in destroyed relationships. Sin is the most selfish of acts. It influences, to some extent, everyone whom we touch. (5) Sin pays in installments. (6) Sin pays in full. "The wages of sin is death." (7). Sin is a fact of universal experience, and if there were not the story of the fall of man in the beginning of the Bible, man's sin would remain an unsolved riddle.
Sin consists essentially in the rejection of the authority of God. Sin, therefore, as the Bible constantly affirms, is in essence godlessness.
The modernists would have us believe that man is essentially good... That is not true! "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." (Genesis 6:5-6).
Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-19 this description of man: "As it is written. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."
"FOR ALL HAVE SINNED AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD." (Romans 3:23).
Our lesson today began with the story of the ministry of John the Baptist and his proclamation of the need for man to repent, and turn from his sin.
It was with the background of man's deep need of cleansing and change, and with the knowledge that the promised Messiah was about to break into the world's history with the Kingdom of Heaven, that John the Baptist proclaims with clarion call...REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.
Question! What did John the Baptist mean when he told his audience to repent? When the people asked him...he told them to share what they possessed. When the publicans asked what to do, he told them to be fair and honest in their dealings with man. And when the soldiers questioned John what they should do to repent, his reply: "Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages." His theme: "Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance."
In the Old Testament, repentance meant the turning from evil, obedience with regard to the will of God and trust in God even in the absence of earthly or human help.
In the New Testament, repentance means a fundamentally new turning of the human will to God, a turning from blindness and error to the Saviour. When a man truly repents, conversion takes place which involves the change

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of lordship. The one until the moment of repentance was under the lordship of Satan comes under the lordship of Jesus Christ...he comes out of darkness into light, from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. "Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:12-14).
Repentance is not simply a mental activity; genuine repentance involves the intellect, emotions and will.
Repentance is not a pre-salvation attempt to set one's life in order. The call to repentance is not a command to make sin right before turning to Christ in faith. Rather it is a command to recognize one's lawlessness and hate it, to turn one's back on it and flee to Christ, embracing Him with wholehearted devotion. The repentance that Christ requires of His people consists in a settled refusal to set any limit to the claims which He may make on their lives. In the new life which follows repentance the absolute supremacy of God is the controlling principle of life.
Intellectually, repentance begins with a recognition of sin, understanding that we are sinners, that our sin is an affront to a holy God, and more precisely, that we are personally responsible for our own guilt.
Emotionally, genuine repentance often accompanies an over-whelming sense of sorrow. This sorrow in and of itself is not repentance; one can be sorry or ashamed without being truly repentant. It is difficult to imagine a true repentance that does not include at least an element of sorrow—not sorrow for getting caught; not sadness because of the consequences; but a sense of anguish at having sinned against God.
Volitionally, repentance involves a change of direction, a transformation of the will. Far from being only a change of the mind, it constitutes a willingness—more accurately, a determination—to abandon stubborn disobedience and surrender to the will of Christ.
As such, genuine repentance will inevitably result in a change of behavior. The behavior change is not itself repentance, but it is the fruit repentance will certainly bear. Where there is no observable difference in conduct, there can be no confidence that repentance has taken place! Real repentance alters the character of the whole man. Repentance means that you realize that you are a guilty, vile sinner in the presence of God, that you deserve the wrath and punishment of God, that you are hell-bound. It means that you begin to realize that this thing called sin is in you, that you long to get rid of it, and that you turn your back on it in every shape and form. You renounce the world whatever the cost, the world in its mind and outlook as well as its practice, and you deny yourself, and take up the cross and go after Christ. "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the

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lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever." (1 John 2:15-17).
Isaiah 55:6-7 gives the Old Testament invitation to repentance: Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, for He will abundantly pardon."
Repentance has always been the foundation of the biblical call to salvation and it is the only way into the kingdom of God. When Peter gave the gospel invitation at Pentecost, in the first public evangelism of the church era, repentance was at the heart of it. "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins." (Acts 2:38)
No evangelism that omits the message of repentance can property be called the gospel, for sinners cannot come to Jesus Christ apart from a radical change of heart, mind and will. That demands a spiritual crisis leading to a complete turnaround and ultimately a wholesale transformation. It is the only kind of conversion Scripture recognizes.
The Western church has subtly changed the thrust of the gospel. Instead of exhorting sinners to repent, evangelicalism in our society asks the unsaved to "accept Christ." That makes sinners sovereign and puts Christ at their disposal. In effect it puts Christ on trial and hands the judge's robes and gavel to the inquirer—precisely opposite of what should be! Ironically, people who ought to be concerned about whether Christ will accept them are being told by Christians that it is the sinner's prerogative to "accept Christ." This modified gospel depicts conversion as "a decision for Christ" rather than a life-transforming change of heart involving genuine faith, repentance, surrender, and rebirth unto newness of life. The trouble is that the whole "Accept Christ" attitude is likely to be wrong. It makes Him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on Him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting His verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. Repentance pleads with the Lord to forgive and deliver from the burden of sin and the fear of judgment and hell. Repentance is the gateway into the kingdom of God, wherein we open our hearts and lives to the rule and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin, That coin is called conversion. Repentance turns from sin to Christ, and faith embraces Him as the only hope of salvation and righteousness. That is what conversion means and when repentance is genuine...the Spirit of God enters our being and His kingdom is established in our heart!
I pray that you have repented from your sin and turned to Jesus Christ for mercy and grace. Entrance into His kingdom is by repentance!