The most rigorous theological exams are given by five-year-olds from the back seat of the car.  While we are busy navigating traffic and directions, our children are staring out at the passing world, pondering deep mysteries. They are not interested in subtlety. Only clarity.  “Where is heaven?”  “How do people get there?”  “Can we go and visit grandpa?”  And these are but the merest sampling.  

Unfortunately, our theology too often lives only in abstraction.   But children demand a theology that lives in time, space, and daily life.  When Jesus’ disciples tried to shoo children away, he rebuked them sharply. “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Children understand.  The Kingdom of God must be a real, tangible realm.  Not just an ideal or an idea.  Jesus’ preaching is centered on the kingdom of God.  It is referenced nearly a hundred times in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.   Jesus’ first sermon was about the Kingdom of God. Warning and inviting his hearers that it is near.   And we are taught to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

But where is it?  And what is it, exactly?   The Bible speaks much about the kingdom.  It is near.  It is not of this world.  It is within us.  It has citizens.   Not everyone will enter it.  Unless you are “born from above you cannot even see it.”  Old Testament saints, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have entered it.  It grows like leavening bread and mustard plants.  The gospel is called the “Gospel of the Kingdom.”  It is called both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Heaven.  It is the “kingdom of the beloved Son.”  It is like a great treasure, that when a man finds it, he will give up everything to possess it.  Other kingdoms cannot encroach upon it.  “The kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.”

But what it is?  And where is it?  The people of Jesus’ day were obsessed with the idea that the Kingdom of God was a political and national kingdom.  They hoped for a kingdom with geographic borders and nationalistic and ethnic identity.  And frankly, many people today believe the same thing.  But, as Jesus told Pilate, “[his] kingdom is not of this world.”   Yet this does not mean it is ethereal or abstract.  It has a real, mighty King who has come to bind the strong-man and plunder his real kingdom to bring glorious liberty to the real prisoners of darkness.  

And so, the imprisonment of John by a capricious, earthly, petty tyrant is not the end of budding kingdom of God.  But just the beginning.  Jesus comes at this moment proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”   And in this opening sermon and the calling of his first disciples, we learn simple lessons about the kingdom.  What it is. Where it is.  And how we enter it.  Lessons any five-year-old can understand. 

Join us as we examine Mark 1:14-20 and consider the kingdom of God.  Where is it?  What is it? And how can we enter it?    We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.