## TOTAL REVOLUTION IN OUR WORLD

### Series Objective:

The Sermon on the Mount has sometimes been called a Kingdom manifesto. To the average reader it sounds like an impossible ideal. While it is true that Kingdom of God will never be realized until the return of Jesus, we are to walk in faith and expectation of that which is yet to be realized. As followers of Jesus, part of our mission is to pray and act in such a way that “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The questions we need to ask are: How would this world look different if our workplace was transformed; our home life altered or our school changed? Over the next four weeks we will begin to look at, dream about and move towards the Kingdom of God on this earth. We will help students understand the heart of Jesus for this world and challenge them to enter into creative partnership with the Holy Spirit in the grand mission of TOTAL REVOLUTION in this world!

### Series Intro:

The following introduction can be spoken or revised by the leader to “front-load” the experience for the students.

Jesus seemed to talk an awful lot about the Kingdom of God in the New Testament. “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed”, “The Kingdom of God is like a little bit of yeast that works its way through the whole batch of dough”, “the Kingdom of God is like a woman who loses a coin and sweeps out her entire house to find it”, “the kingdom of God is like a man who throws a banquet and invites a great many people” and so on. But what the heck does that all mean? Despite the fact that Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God far more than he talked about getting saved, most of us still haven’t figured out what the heck the Kingdom of God is all about!

Part of the problem is that Jesus lived 2000 years ago and he taught in a culture that looked and thought a lot different than we do. Jesus was a Jewish storyteller not a personal power guru from the Home Shopping Network! We have to learn to get inside his language and mindset if we are to figure out what he was seeing that we aren’t. The other part of the problem is that we have forgotten something Jesus did make pretty clear. Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” We read through the New Testament and look for a blueprint of the Kingdom. We want to know who will be in charge, where the cable lines will be laid and what the neighborhood will look like. The New Testament offers none of that information. Jesus said to the disciples: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). What Jesus is saying is that God has entered into partnership with us his children to flesh out the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus, through his parables and teaching, gives us the heartbeat and essence of the Kingdom but then he calls on us to give it sinew and flesh. Wow! Maybe that’s why we don’t talk about the Kingdom of God; it’s a HUGE responsibility!

Over the next four weeks we are going to take a look each week at one of the parables of Jesus that speak about the Kingdom. That will get us going! It will give us the pulse and spirit of the Kingdom and then we will spend some time dreaming about the flesh and bones and meat of the matter. Like it or not, you are an architect of the Kingdom – you are a Kingdom Revolutionary! What will you bind and what will you loose?

Contact: Please feel free to email the author to clarify, brainstorm ideas or provide feedback: Paul Carter.

### SERIES TOPICS

- The Parable of the Talents handout
- The Parable of the Mustard Seed handout
- The Parable of the Barns handout
- The Parable of the Yeast handout