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Introduction

When Thy Kingdom Comes, I Will Go

My father was a sergeant in the army. He entered the army when he was 18 years old. He did it because my mother was pregnant with me and my twin brother. As teenagers, we would ask him how he liked being in the military. He would tell us that he hated it. There were several things about the military that he didn’t like. One of the main things was reveille. Reveille is the general term that most military branches use for getting up in the morning. It comes from a French word that means “to wake up” or “to rise.”

In the military, reveille is usually not a fun experience. The point is to get soldiers to wake up and come to attention in the quickest manner possible. My father would tell me and my twin brother that it can be hard to get young military cadets out of bed and up and ready to face the world early in the morning. So, the personnel responsible for reveille would have to be very creative in the ways that they tried to wake up my father and other soldiers.

The wake-up call could come by someone playing a bugle or banging on drums outside the barracks or near the flag posts. If a certain group of cadets was extremely hard to wake up, commanders would bang on the barrack walls, or walk into the actual barracks and bang pots together. This usually included someone yelling at the top of their lungs and using multiple expletives and other colorful words. Most of the language used would not be fit for general conversation, but hopefully you get the point.

Our father hated his experiences in the military. But there was something funny about him. He kept some of those unfortunate practices from his military life and used them to try to motivate me and my twin brother while we were in high school. As much as he hated reveille as the way to wake him up, he seemed to love using it to wake us up in the morning. If we stayed in bed one minute after our alarm clock went off, he would slap our bedroom door, and throw it open so the door hit the wall.

He scared us awake every single morning. Sometimes he would change it up and add some variety. Some days he would slap the door loudly, run into our room, and yell “Get up!” Sometimes he would bang things together. If I didn’t know better, I would think that he got up early every morning and stood outside our bedroom door just to see if we would oversleep so he could scare us. For someone who hated having it done to him, he sure seemed to get a lot of joy out of doing it to us. Derrell and I couldn’t wait for the day that we moved out so we could wake up like normal human beings.

But, there’s something else that’s funny about all of this. When my son Malik was a teenager, I did to him what my dad did to us. Malik was proof that there’s something within teenagers that requires them to sleep through the sweet soft voice of their parents urging them to awake and see the beauty of a new day. When Malik slept through his alarm or was having a hard time getting up in the morning, I would bang on the first-floor hallway door and yell up to his bedroom on the second floor “Get up, boy!” If he was having an extra difficult morning, I would throw something up the stairs into his room so it would hit his wall and wake him up.

As an adult, I understand my father’s intentions now. There was work that needed to be done. The sooner we got to doing it, the sooner we would be done. We couldn’t sleep all day and miss school, or work, or whatever responsibilities we had that day. There were important things that needed to be done. Sometimes, I think my relationship with God is a little like my relationship with my father. Sometimes, I have the tendency to try to sleep my way through life. Sometimes, I want to take it easy and remain in bed where I am comfortable and warm. Inevitably, God, like my father, may use creative means to get my attention by banging on the wall or door, and yell “It’s time to get up! There’s work to do!”

I come to this conclusion from reading multiple passages that seem unrelated. Those passages are Jonah 3, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, and Mark 1:14-20. Jonah 3 shares the story of how God’s prophet preached repentance to the inhabitants of Nineveh, and in response, those people did repent, offering themselves to God. In 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Paul delivered a word of challenge to the Corinthian church for them to reconsider their personal values and future expectations. In Mark 1:14-20, we see a strange case of “call and response” between Jesus and a group of menial laborers.

I think these seemingly unrelated passages have a common theme, or better yet, a common question that must be answered. The question underlying these passages is how do the characters in the stories respond when God calls them into action for the Kingdom? When the calling of God, or the plan of God, interrupts their lives, when it wakes them from their sleep, how would they respond? Would they willingly participate in the work of the Kingdom of God, or would they try to remain asleep?

I realize that I just used a big theological term. The Kingdom of God is a phrase that we sometimes shy away from. The Kingdom of God, sometimes called the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s gospel (as we will see in the next chapter), is spoken of in many places in the Bible. Christ talks about it in multiple parables. He said, “The Kingdom of God is like…” He compares it to farmers planting a garden. In other places, he compares it to a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle. He also compares its growth to that of a mustard seed.

In simple terms, the Kingdom of God refers to a time that is both present and future, where the world, and all that is in it, will be changed for the glory of God. It’s presently occurring and will occur in the future. In a sense, it’s the fact that God is working through fallen people to transform a fallen world back into what God originally intended. This was part of the pronouncement that Jesus gave to the world when he said that the Kingdom of God had come. He was announcing His intention to change the world. The question that his hearers had to answer was would anyone be ready to follow him as he fulfilled God’s plans?

This idea of responding to the opportunity to participate in the coming Kingdom of God plays out in different ways in the biblical passages I listed earlier. In1 Corinthians, Paul was writing to a group of believers who were sleepwalking through life. They were experiencing several issues within their home church. One of their problems was keeping life, personal relationships, and personal possessions in perspective as it related to experiencing the Kingdom of God. In multiple places, Paul told them who and what would not make it into the Kingdom. Specifically, in chapter 7, he told them that, in order to participate in the Kingdom, they would need to make a habit of practicing purity in their desires and actions.

Overall, he was trying to get them to understand that what’s most important was to remember that there would come a time when physical pleasures, making money, family and friends, and all the other things that they held dear to their hearts would hold no longer hold any value. Why? Because this world is passing away and the Kingdom of God would be coming. With the Kingdom, priorities would have to be changed. They would not see the world, or possessions, or even family and friends the same.

Life would not solely consist of the number of livestock they owned or the possessions they had. It would consist of faithful service to God. For the Corinthian church, the Kingdom of God was understood as something that was still yet to come. It was just over the horizon, but it was on the way. And its’ coming would require that the church at Corinth have a new mindset. All that life offered was a blessing from God, but God’s blessings were to take a back seat to God’s overall plan. God’s plans were not to be eclipsed by God’s gifts to humankind.

The story of Jonah is probably familiar to most of us. God gave Jonah the command to preach repentance to a group of people. Jonah refused and instead went in the opposite direction of where God wanted him to go. After an ill-fated boat ride and a big fish swallowing and spitting him out, he ran in the direction God sent him. In the big picture, I understand the book of Jonah to be less about a big fish and more about how Jonah responded to the idea that God’s Kingdom may include people that he did not necessarily like.

What God commanded Jonah to do, which was to preach repentance to Nineveh, was more than a shock to Jonah. Beth Tanner says,

“To an Israelite like Jonah, this would be equivalent to announcing today, ‘Go to Osama Bin Laden’s compound.’ Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the nation that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and held the southern kingdom of Judah as a vassal (a slave nation) for almost one hundred years. Assyria was more than an enemy; it was a brutal occupying force that forever changed Israel’s fortunes. Jonah is called out by God to go and prophesy to the enemy…Jonah is told to go into the enemy city and announce God’s judgment.”1

Instead of going where God commanded, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. He may have run because he was afraid. Or he may have thought his enemies didn’t deserve God’s mercy. Either way, he ran away from God’s Kingdom action. He avoided the opportunity to bring about godly change in the world. God dealt with him through the big fish. After the fish spit him out, we are told that the prophet ran to do what God had commanded. He preached repentance and the coming Kingdom of God. For the occupants of Nineveh, the Kingdom was imminent. It could appear before the end of the week. The Kingdom of God would look like their enemies marching up a hill, preparing to kick in the city gates and destroy the city walls. Or the Kingdom of God could look like sackcloth, and dust, and penance. Nineveh chose the latter.

Again, I think the story is less about Nineveh and more about the prophet. For Jonah, the Kingdom didn’t look like he expected. After God’s pronouncement of coming judgment, the Kingdom looked like Jonah’s enemies. And those enemies were technically no longer his enemies. They had taken the first steps to become his kindred. After their repentance before God, they were going to be treated like Jonah. They would experience love, compassion, and forgiveness. This Kingdom experience would require Jonah to adopt a new mindset. He no longer had enemies, but friends. He had the opportunity to be reconciled to them. Years of hatred, strife, and turmoil could give way to God’s overall plan of loving one another. The love of God had a new face and it would be one that was familiar, yet unwanted.

The story of Christ calling the disciples is also a familiar story. It seems simple and straight forward. Jesus, after his baptism and temptations in the wilderness, began preaching that the Kingdom of God had come near. One day, as he walked along the seashore, he saw four men and told them to follow him. They all stopped what they were doing and followed him. Two of them even left their father to fend for himself in a boat. John chapter 1 tells us that one of the new followers went to his brother and proclaimed that he had found the person that Moses and the prophets spoke about as being Messiah. He would be the one who would eventually come to set their nation free.

For these new disciples, the Kingdom of God had been a historic promise that was still far off in the distance. But, after meeting Jesus, and witnessing His miracles and teaching, they realized that the Kingdom was present. “Come and see this man” became a regular refrain from people who encountered Jesus. The disciples, the woman at the well, the blind who were made to see, the lame that were made to walk, they all encouraged others to come and experience the Kingdom as found in Christ. They understood their part in the Kingdom to revolve around introducing others to Christ. The disciples in the gospels understood this to mean that they were to leave their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, livelihood, and comfort in order to follow him. For the disciples, the Kingdom looked like sacrifice and service.

In all these passages, God breaks into, or is about to break into, someone’s life. God is preparing to give the reveille call to wake someone up out of their spiritual slumber and put them to work. God gives the command to get ready and to get involved in what God is already doing. The question for the people in our texts is will they be ready to get involved? The same question rings true for us. When God says, “get up,” will we be ready to get involved? When God says that it is our turn to help in the Kingdom-building process, what will we do?

Let’s be truthful. When God breaks into our lives, it’s usually inconvenient. It happens when we least expect it. God’s call to service for the Kingdom never comes a convenient time. When God interrupts our lives, we sometimes see it as a disruption, a hassle, or an inconvenience. I’ve got other things that I need to do with my time. But, here’s an idea. What if we saw service for the Kingdom less as a hassle and more as providence, an opportunity, a blessing, or simply as God’s Kingdom building action?

As you read these words, you may be thinking, Terrell, I already go to church and I help people by volunteering my time in multiple ways. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but God’s Kingdom is much bigger than a building. God doesn’t call us to stay comfortable and protected where we are. His command to Jonah and the disciples was to get up and leave. Leave your comfort zones. Leave the place you are familiar with and trust me to move you to a new place that glorifies me. He called them to leave their homes and go where they would have to depend on God’s grace. Similarly, God calls us to drop our security blankets so we can go to unfamiliar places and serve.

The story of God’s Kingdom is not about our comfort. God’s calling is not about us. The going is not about us. It’s about what God is doing in our world, our cities, and communities, in the lives of people, and how we can all participate in it. The focus is not on us but where, to whom, and for what purpose God is sending each of us. That place doesn’t have to be overseas, or to another state. It can be to needy people in our own spiritually-contested neighborhoods.

To be involved in the coming Kingdom will likely require a new mindset for all of us, as it was by the Ninevites. Jonah missed out on the redeeming power of the Kingdom because he resented God’s love for others. The Corinthian church had to learn to put the Kingdom before possessions and personal relationships. The disciples had to be fully committed to the Kingdom. It would be all or nothing. The Kingdom requires action. Jonah, get up and go. Corinthian church, get your perspective right. Fishermen, stop, drop, and follow me.

The Kingdom of God may seem far off, but it is actually very near. God is already at work forming a people, a community, for God’s glory. The Kingdom and Kingdom work may include people and things of which we are unfamiliar. Kingdom work may require us to sacrifice and stretch our faith in order to enter in. But within it, we are surely going to experience the presence of God and the beauty of community. We don’t have to wait to be swept away to a far-off place sometime in the future to experience this. We can experience it in the here and now.

1 Beth L. Tanner. “Commentary on Jonah 3:1-5,” 10, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=229, accessed 12/26/19.