The Kingdom of God has long been a matter of primary importance for the people of God. God’s rule come on earth was what the Hebrew prophets longed to see. Jesus taught his disciples to pray with this request superseding all others: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. True believers want God to rule the world—for him to take his rightful place as the King of kings—and they pursue his kingdom rule with their lives. But how? How do the people of God pursue the kingdom of God? In order to answer this question, let’s look back at first-century Palestine and see how Jesus’ contemporaries pursued God’s kingdom.

There are four general ways that first-century Jews sought to bring about God’s kingdom. (For a full treatment of this, read N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, or if you’re feeling adventurous, his large volume The New Testament and the People of God.) Those four ways are: Separatist, Zealot, Compromise, and Purification.

Separatist

The Essenes were a community of believers who had finally had enough of the corrupt society in which they lived and decided to move out into the desert to form their own community. They were fed up with the Jewish leaders, the Roman occupation, and the corrupt temple worship, so they just disappeared and waited for God to do whatever he was going to do. The separated themselves from the corruption of the culture and pursued God’s kingdom by being faithful within their own community and waiting for God to act in judgment against the larger world. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Village, you may be able to understand the separatist community.

Zealot

You may have heard of a group of Jewish revolutionaries called The Sicarii. They were zealots who pursued the kingdom of God through violent uprising against the Roman overlords. They believed that God would bring about his rule on earth through a freed Israel, and that the Messiah would achieve a military victory over Rome that would be the symbol of God’s theological victory over the forces of evil. God’s kingdom comes about, therefore, through the violent uprising of his people and the military defeat of the pagan Roman Gentiles who ruled the land. The mantle of oppression must be thrown off through military might, and only then will God’s promises come true.

Compromise

Many of Israel’s most powerful leaders came to and held their positions of power through compromise with the Roman authorities. The mindset of these politicians was that you had to go along to get along, and if Israel wanted any semblance of nationhood, any hope for the future, then she would have to work with Rome rather than seek a violent revolution. Israel’s path to sovereignty and greatness (and, therefore, the future of the kingdom of God and the hope in the fulfillment of his promises) was compromise with the powers-that-be. You get what you can get while you can get it and hope that God will bless it in the end.

Purification

Unable to do anything about the impurity of the pagans who occupied the land, the Pharisees sought to achieve purity through careful obedience to Torah and the traditions of the elders. They wanted to change Israel from within, and in so doing, hope that God will recognize the faithfulness of his people and send his Messiah to rescue them. There was some thought that if all Israel could keep Torah perfectly for one day, then Messiah would come. The Pharisees hoped that, by remaining pure, God would mark them out as the True Israel, and whenever he decided to act, he would do so for the sake of those who had kept themselves pure.

When faced with corruption and sin within the church and debauchery and idolatry from the culture, we can all be tempted to respond in one of these four ways. Some of us separate into our own tiny group and watch everyone else go to hell. Others get angry to the point of violence, whether through word or deed. Still others reach a point of compromise, convinced that there’s no other way forward but to lay down certain principles. And others try the path of purity, hoping to compel God to act by their own faithfulness. But there is a fifth way—the way of incarnation.

Incarnation

Jesus didn’t pursue the kingdom through either of the previous four methods. He came and said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.” Jesus’ claim was that the kingdom was coming about in and through his work and preaching. You might say that Jesus incarnated the kingdom—he made the rule of God come about on earth through everything he said and did, which ultimately led him to the cross and, through that, the empty tomb.

This fifth way is now our way—we are the body of Christ on earth. Jesus’ commission to us is to continue his work (that’s what it means to make disciples), and to see the rule of God come about on earth even as we wait for this to be ultimately accomplished when Jesus himself returns. We are not to be idle while he is away. We are to be about our Master’s business. And maybe the best place to start is to read, again, our Lord’s word to his disciples from the Sermon on the Mount.

Idolatry is easy. Humans turn created things (or those things which are not God) into objects of worship quite naturally. We devote our lives to success, wealth, power, or even our own kids rather than to the God who created us and sent his son to die for us. We place pastors, politicians, athletes and celebrities on pedestals of undo height and glory. We make gods of mere mortals.

In the Bible, idolatry is the sin that infuriates God the most, and is the one by which he is most confounded. Isaiah expresses God’s consternation over idolatry this way:

[Wood] is man’s fuel for burning;

       some of it he takes and warms himself,

       he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

       But he also fashions a god and worships it;

       he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;

       over it he prepares his meal,

       he roasts his meat and eats his fill.

       He also warms himself and says,

       “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;

       he bows down to it and worships.

       He prays to it and says,

       “Save me; you are my god.”
They know nothing, they understand nothing;

       their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,

       and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
No one stops to think, 

       no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,

       “Half of it I used for fuel;

       I even baked bread over its coals,

       I roasted meat and I ate.

       Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?

       Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

Nothing makes less sense to God than idolatry, and yet this is the sin his people committed again and again. As early on as the Exodus, the Israelites fashioned a golden calf (perhaps to resemble a god they had worshipped while in Egypt) and bowed down to it. When they entered the promised land they added the idols of the Canaanites—Baal, Asherah, Molech—to their own worship. Idolatry (which God understood as adultery against himself) was the reason for the demise of Israel. It was because of their idolatry that the Northern Kingdom was destroyed and the Southern Kingdom sent into exile.

In the New Testament, Paul laments the idolatry he finds rampant among all the peoples of the earth. He writes in Romans:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Idolatry is a problem for all mankind. It’s in our fallen nature to worship that which is not God. Even today there is unfettered idolatry running loose among churchgoers. We worship the gods of success and power just like the ancients, though perhaps more insidiously because we wrap it up in our Christianity. We turn our pastors and politicians into gods and place upon them all the expectations and demands of deity. Our idolatry grieves God no less today than it did when the stories of the Bible were being lived in the dust and grass of Palestine. The saddest irony, of course, is that when God did become a man—the one man worthy of worship—we rejected and killed him.

I urge you to examine your own heart to discern who and what has your central devotion rather than God. Who sits upon the throne of your soul? There is only one who is worthy to sit on that great seat—he who created you and knows you from first to last. Idolatry is easy. True worship of the true God is hard. Do the hard stuff.

At dia•spora, our ministry for young adults and young families, we do a Q&A session at the end of the service. The people who come to the gathering are really smart and ask great questions, so I’m really looking forward to not being on the panel eventually! Because they ask such good questions, we don’t have time to get to them all. But we do try to follow up on our ministry blog with responses to all the unanswered questions. Here’s one that I tried to answer.

“Are you against waiting on Gods confirmation to make a decision? I am not against stepping out in faith just because casting lots isn’t the way to go anymore. But I absolutely respect people that are able s to sit, wait, and pray for God to make his will known.”

I don’t think anybody would be against waiting on God’s confirmation to make a decision. The question is, How does that confirmation come about? In what form does God deliver his answer? Is it an audible voice, or perhaps a voice in your head? Scripture? Through friends? A miraculous sign? A word from the Lord through a pastor? A general sense or feeling?

There are some forms of confirmation that are more reliable than others, and the trick is learning to hear God’s voice through the static and noise of your own selfish desires and the conventional wisdom of our culture. I could tell you plenty of embarrassing stories of what I thought was God’s confirmation but turned out to be something entirely different. (Thankfully, I was never the guy that told a near stranger, “God told me to marry you.” But it happens, and, please, don’t be that guy.)

When you’re seeking God’s confirmation on a major decision in your life, here’s my advice:

1. Pray. Invite God into the decision making process. Ask him to bring clarity and wisdom.
2. Read the Bible and look for principles to guide your decision. But when you go to the Scriptures it’s very important that you be humble. Remember, you’re not Moses or David or Paul. But God’s principles that guided their life are the same principles that ought to guide yours.
3. Talk to people with more life experience than you. Chances are that someone else has been down this road before you, and they’ve got a great perspective to offer you. Who knows, maybe God will speak to you through the wise counsel of your elders.
4. Talk to your friends who know you well, and invite them to be brutally honest with you. Find people who will tell you the truth and tell them about the choice at hand. A good friend is someone who will tell you when you’re being ridiculous and who will encourage you when you’re being smart.
5. Use the wisdom that God has given you from the previous experiences of your life. Look back at the story God has been writing through your life, and let that be an element to consider how he might be continuing the story.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: God moves at his own pace. Be sure that you’re walking with him, not running ahead or lagging behind. And, given our culture, it’s likely that we’re trying to go faster than God is willing to move. So be patient. God’s going to go as fast as God’s going to go, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Remember, you’re not that important, and God dearly loves you.

Some Chinese evangelicals claim to have found Noah’s Ark. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but these folks actually seem to have some evidence. Check out the video on ABC’s site (and ignore they obvious condescending tone if it offends you) and see for yourself.

If this is Noah’s Ark, what would that mean for your faith? Would you have a greater sense of trust in Scripture?

For me, I don’t know that it would do much more than to bring a massive smile to my face. To be alive when a major element of biblical history is found is a very cool thing, and if this is Noah’s Ark, then we are living in a special time. But as for my faith and my view of Scripture? I don’t know that those would change much. Hard evidence never seems to do for faith what we always hope it will do.

Stephen Hawking recently made a documentary in which he declares that aliens probably exist and it would be better for us if we didn’t make contact with them. He says that there are 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, creating the potential for an absurdly large amount of planets, some of which could be hospitable to life, even intelligent life. The odds, he says, are for it.

Growing up I was always afraid that, if aliens existed, that must mean that God couldn’t. I’m not sure why those dots were connected in my mind, but I thought that the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe was a slam dunk case against the existence of God. It would certainly mean that humans aren’t special, and if we’re not special, then don’t all of Jesus’ claims fall apart? It’s a slippery slope, you see.

I may be speaking from a position of ignorance (I’m not a scientist), but I thought the probability of evolution (from single-cell organisms to intelligent beings) was as close to mathematically impossible as you can get. Operating from that assumption, it occurred to me that the existence of intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, rather than being the final nail in the coffin of theism, would actually be the greatest proof that there is a Creator. Surely something mathematically impossible couldn’t happen twice (or more) without outside intervention.

Of course this is all light-hearted speculation, but what if aliens showed up and, after learning to communicate with each other, we discovered that they have a tradition very much like our Jesus-tradition? What if their stories mirror our own? What if they told us of a God who Created everything and then, when it all went wrong, became one of the creatures in order to set everything right? Isn’t that at least just as likely as them coming to blow us up and take all the resources of our planet?