The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

The Kingdom of Heaven: The Centerpiece of Matthew’s Gospel

‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.’  (28:18)

         Most corporations and organizations have a mission statement.  The mission of Amazon.com is, ‘To be the most customer-centric company in the world, where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.’  Goldman Sachs says, ‘Our goal is to provide superior returns to our shareholders.’  When people sign up to work, they sign up for a mission.

         Jesus, too, had a mission:  To inaugurate the ‘kingdom of heaven’ on earth.  He sought to establish the very reign of God upon the earth.  From his very first public announcement, he proclaimed this ‘kingdom’ and called subjects into it (4:17 – 25).  He defined the kingdom in terms of a sphere where God’s transforming power would be released among His subjects, especially on the heart level (5:1 – 7:29).  He taught his disciples to pray, ‘Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven’ (6:10).  Jesus speaks of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ thirty two times in Matthew, using the shorthand ‘the kingdom’ almost twenty more times; clearly Jesus felt it was important!  Jesus’ mission was a revolution that would ripple outward from the hearts of people, into social relationships, to challenge the realms of human evil and the demonic.  The kingdom of God would be manifested by His loyal subjects, Jesus’ followers, to a hurting and rebellious world. 

         Jesus tells of his decisive victory in this unfolding drama by his statement at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, ‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth’ (28:18).  He said that after he had entered sin and death in his crucifixion and came through on the other side in his resurrection.  The authority over the nations that once belonged to the devil (4:8 – 9) now belonged to Jesus.  And whereas at that precise moment, the devil had taken Jesus to a high mountain to show him all the nations of the world, now Jesus stood on a high mountain overlooking those same nations.  Maybe it was the very same high mountain, and now Jesus is standing on it as the rightful king of all humanity?  Who knows?  One thing we do know:  The poetry of the situation is unmistakable.  God had planted Jesus’ throne exactly where the devil’s throne was, and a huge battle was about to ensue for the transformation of all humanity.

What would that look like?  Here’s one way it looked:  William was born in England to a wealthy and influential family.  Soon after graduating from Cambridge University in 1780, the rather spoiled and high-society William was elected to Parliament.  At that time, he bowed to the authority of fashion, whim, popular opinion, and wealth.  Soon afterwards, however, he read a book that led him to ask some soul-searching questions.  He then studied the New Testament voraciously.  This led to his acceptance of Jesus Christ’s authority as final and ultimate.  John and Charles Wesley, leaders of the Methodist movement, and John Newton, the former slave trader turned hymn writer who wrote Amazing Grace encouraged him to use his office, not for himself, but to express Christ’s love and Christ’s reign over him.  So William first started improving working conditions in factories.  Millions of men, women and children had no choice but to work sixteen hours, six days a week in grim factories.  People had come to the cities to find work but had been exploited and crowded together in filthy apartments where they caught cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis. 

William was convinced, however, that there was no greater moral issue for England’s conscience than slavery.  Although slave labor wasn’t permitted in England itself, trafficking in African slaves and the exploitation of their labor formed the backbone of the Imperial economy.  William decided he would not rest until his country recognized the cruelty and injustice of this system.  He started delivering speeches everywhere, circulated petitions, and introduced bills in Parliament calling for the immediate abolition of slavery.  In the privileged circles that he was from, he became very unpopular.  The rich claimed that slavery was indispensable to the plantation economy of the colonies, arguing that money was the final authority.  But William wouldn’t stop.  Even when his first bill, in 1791, was defeated by a landslide of 163 votes to 88, he didn’t give up.  Discouragement and great odds were not his final authority.  Finally in 1806, after twenty years of long, hard campaigning, William Wilberforce won the argument.  A bill in Parliament was passed outlawing slave trading in all British colonies from the year 1807.  Still the struggle continued for another 25 years to win the complete emancipation of all slaves in the British Empire.  That second bill was eventually passed in 1833, just weeks before William’s death on July 29, 1833.  Seven hundred thousand slaves were then freed.  Upon his death, William Wilberforce was acclaimed a national hero and he was buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey.  Walden Media released the movie Amazing Grace about Wilberforce in March 2007 (distilled from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints, p.326 – 327).  Here was a man who acknowledged Jesus’ authority – and no other authority – over himself.  And what a transformation occurred! 

A mentor once asked me, ‘Can Jesus be Savior but not Lord?’  I thought about that question for a long time and decided no.  In reality, Jesus saves us by being our Lord.  He saves us from our own sin and evil by challenging every other form of authority to which we bow down.  He even saves us from ourselves – that is, the corruption in our human nature.  That is why the angel Gabriel announces in the beginning, ‘He will save his people from their sins’ (Mt.1:21).  Jesus does not save us ‘from’ the wrath of God, but ‘by’ the wrath of God.  Jesus guides the wrath of God with surgical precision by rooting out sinfulness from human nature, first in himself, and then in us by his Spirit.  He saves us by expressing his good and gracious Lordship over us, and by empowering us as his subjects.  ‘All authority has been given to me.’  So there can be no false dichotomy here.  Jesus is Savior by being Lord.  His mission is to bring people under his Lordship.