Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund kicks off the message series FOMO - Fear of Missing Out - on Easter Sunday.

Message Transcription

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Let's pray together. Father, thank you for each person who's gathered in a socially distanced way, in our Wexford Worship Center, in the Chapel, Lobby, the Strip District, Butler, and online. God, for those who have been, or will be part of any of the 14 worship gatherings to celebrate Easter this weekend at Orchard Hill. I pray that you would speak to each of us and that my words would reflect your word in content, and in tone, and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. 

So, a year ago when Easter came, we, in Western Pennsylvania, were under stay-at-home orders. I don't know if you remember the event. I'm guessing it's hard to forget. But whatever your experience was of that time, I want to ask you to think back over the last year or so and see if you can think through the year and give it a word for yourself, just for yourself. You don't need to share it with anybody. Just what word would you use to characterize the last year of your life? My guess is that there are a lot of words. Some of you would choose the really obvious, easy word: COVID or pandemic. Some of you would maybe say insanity because of how everything has kind of gone. Some of us would look back and we would say, I feel a sense of loss, a sense of disappointment because of what has been. 

I know when I look at some of the things that my own family has had to give up, my kids and some of the things that would have been markers in their lives that didn't happen because of what's taken place, there's disappointment and loss. My mother spent the better part of the last year confined to her apartment because of where she lived and her age. And there was loss there. Some, maybe the word would be fear. For others, maybe the word is joy because you say, I love pajama pants and working from home. And so, for you, it's just been this is great, this is perfect. And then we've had in our country, some other things that have led to tension or division, and I'm sure there are other words that you would choose to denote your own journey over the last year. And today, all over the world, people are gathered to celebrate or commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it's been the message of the Christian Church throughout centuries, that the resurrection makes all the difference. 

So, let me ask you, what difference has the resurrection made in your life over the last year? How was your word different because Jesus rose from the dead? My guess is that for some of us, if we're honest, we'd say, well, I don't know how different my life has been because of the resurrection. Maybe you feel like there's some eternal significance to it, but in terms of a day-to-day difference, in terms of how your life lives, you may say, you know what? I'm not so sure how different it is. Others of us might say there's a lot of distinction in my life because of the resurrection. 

But what I'd like to do is I'd like to share some drawings with you that I think capture maybe a way that we tend to think about Christian faith and maybe a better alternative. And I got these drawings, these ideas from a professor named Tim Mackey and some of the ideas around this come from him as well. And so, this is a drawing that depicts how many people see and think about Christianity and faith. And if this isn't how you tend to think of it yourself, there's a good chance, if you're a person of faith, this is how other people think you think about faith. And that is you live your life. And when you die, you either go to heaven or you go to hell. And the way that it is determined is by whether or not you lived basically a good life while you were here or a bad life. 

In other words, live a good life. And then when you're done, you get to go to the good place, the happy place. And when you die, if you live a bad life, you go to the not so happy place, the bad place. And then there's another version of this that's probably closer to reality. And that says, if you believe the right things, then when you die, you go to heaven. You believe the wrong things when you die, you go to hell. Now I'm not suggesting that our beliefs don't matter and that there isn't a future heaven and hell. But what I'm saying is when we reduce the Christian message to this, to believe the right things, do the right things and you get heaven, believe the wrong things, do the wrong things, and you get hell, what happens is then we start to make Christianity about the minimal entrance requirements. 

In other words, what is it that I have to do? What is it I have to believe in order to get heaven one day, and I just have to endure earth? And then we wonder why the resurrection story, the narrative, the account of Jesus' resurrection doesn't make that much of a difference in our lives. But let me ask you, is this Jesus' message? Does this capture what Jesus taught? You know, it's a good idea when we ask that kind of a question to actually look at our Bible. So, let me show you what Jesus said. And this is at the beginning of his ministry. And so, what he was doing was he was saying, this is what my mission is. This is what I'm about. You heard it, read it from Mark chapter one, but let me read it again. 

It says in John, "After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God." And the good news of God was a phrase that meant the victory of God, the gospel of God. It was Jesus' mission to go around, talking about how God has brought victory. So, what is that victory? Here's what he says. "The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news." Now, I want you to notice that when Jesus talks about the kingdom here, what he doesn't do is he doesn't say the kingdom is yet to come in the future. Now he's not saying there isn't a future element, but he says, the kingdom is now. It's not somewhere you go someday. It's the kingdom is now. Believe the good news and you can encounter the kingdom of God here and now. 

Now we don't often talk about kingdoms in our day. Maybe if you watch a kid's show or an animated movie, you'll have a king in his kingdom or her kingdom. And it will be a way for them to say, this is where things are the way I want them to be. I was talking with a guy the other day and he was telling me about his shed in his backyard. And he said, "It's the one place where things are the way I want them to be." It is his kingdom. That is what a kingdom is. And in the Bible, what we have is we have God creating heaven and Earth. If you go to the very beginning, Genesis 1:1, what does it say? "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth." And what that means is that God when he created the world did not create hell. He created heaven and Earth. 

And the idea of sin came into the Bible in Genesis three, what theologians have called the fall, where Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree. And what happened from that point forward is that the kingdoms of this Earth, the kingdom of humanity, the way that we want to do things came into conflict with the perfect way in which God wanted to do things. And so maybe a better way to think about the teaching of the whole Bible is this. And that is, we have the kingdom of Earth and we have the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. And there's an intersection between these two. 

And the intersection is what has happened in the Old Testament with this idea of animal sacrifice, where people would sacrifice animals to be in a place where they could come to a holy God to say, we now are invading this. And this is what Jesus does in his death and resurrection is he comes into the Earth and says, there's a different kingdom. There's a different way to live. 

Now sometimes when the Bible talks about this, it uses even stronger language. This is James chapter three verse six. It says "The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire." And then it says this. "And is itself set on fire by hell." So, the author, James, says that our tongues can be the very expression of hell, hellish behavior in our world. Have you ever experienced the hellish words of somebody else in your life? Somebody lying to you, betraying you, spreading gossip about you, telling you that they hate you, or that they want nothing to do with you ever again. Those kinds of words, according to James are the expression of hell itself, the kingdom of humanity, not the kingdom of God. Have you ever uttered those kinds of words? 

Well, according to what we see in the text, this is the conflict, the juxtaposition of the kingdom of God, with the kingdom of this world. And this isn't the only place that we see this. It isn't always said in this stark of words, but we see this as well in the gospel of Luke. Here's what we see about the kingdom of God. Luke 17 verses 20 through 21. Says, "Once, when being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied." So, they ask them, where are we going to see this kingdom that you initiate? And 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." 

So, what Jesus says is the kingdom of God is not something that's going to come through a military advancement, not through a political figure, not even through religious institutions. It's coming through people. It's in your midst. That's where we see the kingdom of God. In Matthew chapter 18 verses 1 through 3, we see another instance of how Jesus speaks about the kingdom. Here's what we see. It says, "At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and they asked him who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Sometimes referred to as the kingdom of heaven, sometimes the kingdom of God, and the disciples came and said, when we get there someday, who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom? That was their idea. And here's what Jesus says. Jesus called a little child to him and placed the child among them. And he said, "truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes a lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one, such child in my name welcomes me." 

So, here's what Jesus does. Jesus says the kingdom of the world is all about how much you can advance yourself and how much you can take care of yourself. But if you want to know how the kingdom of heaven works, it's when we humble ourselves, and we welcome people into our lives who can't do anything for us, who have nothing to offer us. He said, that's what the kingdom of heaven is like. There's another instance in Matthew chapter six, where Jesus is talking about not worrying about the things of this earth and in Matthew chapter six, verse 33, he says, "That if we seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things, the stuff of earth will be added to us." 

And the way of this world is to say, I have to do everything for me. If I'm going to have enough, then I have to secure everything, I can't trust anything or God, I need to take care of it. And we refuse generosity sometimes because of it. And the kingdom of God is the way of saying I'll seek God's kingdom and I'll trust God to give me what I need. In Matthew 22, the kingdom of God is a banquet that's offered to the least and the lonely of society. In Romans 14, the kingdom of God is said to be, "A kingdom of joy and peace. Not a matter of eating and drinking." Now you may hear all of this and say, okay, well, why is this better? 

Well, here's what's true. Even if you're not a person of faith or not sure about the kingdom of God, and that is the kingdom of this world has many hellish aspects to it, remember hell isn't just a future destination, it's also a present reality. And when I say there are some present hellish dimensions to our existence, what I'm talking about is the things that all of us see. You've seen the news about shootings in recent days, people going into a crowded venue and saying, it's not enough to take my life. I want to take other people's lives before I go. Maybe you've seen the video of girls being dropped over a wall. And we're told that they're being trafficked, and it's a horrific sight. And we live in a world in which there's hunger, there's poverty, there's war, and there's addiction. And all of these things are a result of the kingdom of the Earth and what God has done in coming to this Earth as Jesus Christ. As he said, I want to get the hell out of the world. Not just keep you from hell in the future. 

And I want to get the hell out of you and out of me because hell exists, not just in the future, but inside of us. This is why Jesus says in Mark chapter one, that you can believe in the kingdom, but says, I want you to repent. I want you to turn. I want you to experience the difference of my kingdom. Here's how C.S. Lewis wrote about this a couple of generations ago. He said this. "There are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, thy will be done. And those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done." All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. And those who knock, it is opened." 

And so, what Jesus is doing when he talks about the kingdom is, he says, there's a better way, a way that you actually want to experience. And what Easter is, what the resurrection is, is it's God's way of saying the Earth that you live in, the kingdom of the Earth, that is you, and is yours, is not the kingdom that I want for everybody. Here's how N.T. Wright writes about it in his book on the resurrection, he says, "Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence, and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things. And that we will work and plan with all the energy of God to implement the victory of Jesus over them all." 

You see Easter is God's start of his move into this kingdom. It actually started before that. But this was his definitive beachhead into the kingdom of the Earth. And he says, this is what my kingdom is about. And you know how the Bible ends. It actually ends, this is Revelation 21 and 22 with a new city coming down from heaven. And do you know how it's described? It's described as the new heavens and the new Earth. And what happens in the end of the Bible is these two things come together, heaven and Earth and have a renewed creation. And what's outside the city is hell because God wants to get it out of his new creation, his rebuilt and renewed creation. 

And so, what happens now is we're living in this place where we can be part of the kingdom, or we can build our own kingdom. But here's the challenge. If a knife is turned on you or on me, sometimes that knife feels like a violent attack when it's from somebody who is not intent on our good. But if a surgeon takes a knife to us to deal with the disease on the inside of us, it is a gracious act to cut us open. And the kingdom of God is moving, not just out there to deal with what's going on, but inside the hearts of God's people to bring about change and repentance and a difference. Because to repent means to turn and go the other way. And what it means is that every time that an individual has a choice to say, will I choose my kingdom or the kingdom of God, then they turn and choose the kingdom of God that they are advancing God's kingdom in some way. 

And it's not that belief doesn't matter because Jesus says repent and believe the good news. And so, there is a belief aspect, but if we reduce the Christian message to minimal entrance requirements, then the resurrection doesn't make a difference in our day-to-day life. It's just a thing to believe for some future thing. Instead of saying, this is God's invitation to a whole different way of life. And here's what happens when you and I choose the kingdom of God. And that is we bring about a little taste, a little bigger beachhead into the world and the kingdoms of this world. Every time you gather with people to worship and to say there's another King, there's an alternate way of seeing things, the kingdoms of this world aren't everything, you are extending the kingdom of God. 

Every time you get together with a small group and you share a little bit of your journey and your soul, and you pray together that things will be different, you're bringing a little piece of the kingdom of God. Every time a group of students gets together and is mentored by an adult or a leader to say, there's a path in life that is better than the path of this world. Then you're bringing a little piece of the kingdom of God. Every time somebody steps out of loneliness into community. Every time a marriage is turned. Every time that there's an opportunity to bless people around us, whether it's bringing food and large quantities like we just did or serving people individually, we're bringing a little piece of the kingdom of God. And this is exactly what Jesus told his followers to work for and pray for. 

And I say this because in the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, when Jesus taught his followers to pray, do you know what he taught them to pray? He said, "When you pray, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." What's the next line? "Your kingdom come, your will be done." Where? "On Earth as it is in heaven." Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Let this be where we go to. Jesus' mission was so much greater than minimal entrance requirements and believe something or do something and get heaven. It was heaven is coming here and you can be a part of it now. 

I love how Dallas Willard wrote about this years ago. When writing about Mark 1:15, he said, "All the preliminaries have been taken care of and God's kingdom is now accessible to everyone." Then he said this. "Review your plans for living and base your life on this remarkable opportunity." You see Easter, the resurrection, is not just something to believe so that you get a ticket to the kingdom someday. Christianity is not just the musings of a dead philosopher that you say, well, maybe this will help me have a better life. It is the relationship with a living God who is pushing a new kingdom, a better kingdom to counter the kingdoms of this world that are full of the hellish fires of selfishness. And that means that for you and me, we stand day after day to make a choice of which kingdom we want to live in. 

You see, we can look out around us and say, oh, it's this and that, that's hellish. But the surgery is turned inward in the Bible. God is addressing all of the things that are counter to his kingdom. And here's the challenge for me. We've started a new series today that we're calling FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. And here's what is my fear, maybe yours, when it comes to this is that if I say God, your kingdom, I'll seek that before my kingdom, I'm afraid that sometimes I won't have enough, that my world won't work out okay for me. But what faith is, is it's that moment where we say, I am going to trust that God and his kingdom is better than the kingdom I can create on my own. 

And so, here's the invitation today. And that is just to say, I am going to choose the kingdom of God. I'm going to turn and believe the good news of God again. And that is where I'm going to put my hope. And in the coming weeks, we're going to explore this phrase, the kingdom of God and what it means to live without fear. But to instead choose the way of God, the kingdom of God. You can start today. If you're here and you say, I've always kind of thought that I lived above the line and it was somebody else who lived below the line and that I would have the kingdom, whatever that is. Or maybe I rejected that category. But maybe today you're seeing the invitation from God as compelling for the first time. You can participate in it by acknowledging the hellishness in you, the sin in you, and your need for a savior, the invasion of the kingdoms of this world from God himself. And say, God, I want you and Jesus Christ to be my savior. I believe in the resurrection. 

And maybe you're here, and you say, I've believed that for a long time, but if you're honest with yourself, your life has been largely about advancing your own kingdom in recent days. And you haven't trusted that God has a better kingdom, a better way. You've chosen to say, I have to do it. Maybe today is just your day to say this Easter, I want the resurrection to make a difference in the way that I've described what's ahead. I asked you to think about a word for last year. What will be different next year because Jesus is alive and not just a dead thinker about your future? The resurrection does make all the difference if you believe it and base your life on the remarkable opportunity of the kingdom of God being here and now. 

Father, thank you that you invite us to your kingdom, and that we don't have to wait for someday, but we can begin experiencing it, not in its completeness, but a taste of it here and now, that points to the day when it will be experienced in all its fullness. And God, I pray that for each one of us who's gathered that that would become our experience of your son, Jesus Christ. We pray it in his name. Amen.