Thought from today’s Bible reading from John 6.
Many religious people are looking forward to the time when Christ returns and establishes His kingdom here on the earth. The alleged reason why Jesus did not do this when He came the first time was because the people rejected Him and would not make Him their king. Therefore, since Jesus was rejected by His people, He ascended back to heaven, the church was established instead, and believers now look forward to the coming kingdom.
The problem with this the above theory is that it is not taught in the Bible. The following verse debunks the claim that Jesus could not establish His kingdom because the people rejected Him. After feeding five thousand, the people were willing to risk their lives in a rebellion against the Roman Empire with the goal of establishing Jesus as their king. But this was not part of God’s plan.
“So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone” (John 6:15).
If Jesus’ mission in coming to earth was to establish a physical kingdom and overthrow the Romans, He had an army of five thousand men ready to fight for him. Yet, as He would tell Pilate, His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36).
The church and the kingdom are described as being the same body (Matthew 16:18-19). Jesus did not establish the church because He failed to establish His kingdom. He established His church, which was and is His kingdom.
Several passages can be considered that show us that Jesus’ kingdom was established in the first century (Daniel 2:44; Mark 9:1; Colossians 1:13). We do not need to be looking for a future kingdom. We need to be serving the Lord in His kingdom today.
Tomorrow’s reading: Matthew 15; Mark 7
[I’m using the Chronological reading plan on the Bible Gateway website if you’d like to follow along, too.]
Daily Notes & Observations contains all 365 articles from this series and is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
