TXB | 2024 Annual Meeting | Joel Gregory on “The Kingdom of God Has Come Near”

0:00 Well, thank you so much, Dr. Quinare for those overly kind words of introduction. If I could respond to that, I could say this concerning the Baptist General Convention of Texas or Texas Baptists. As I say every time, I have the opportunity. Everything good that ever happened to me in the kingdom of God had some connection with the Baptist General Convention of Texas from my very beginning in the faith to this very hour. And I'm thankful for that. My assignment given to me by the executive director is to speak to the theme, the kingdom of God is at hand or it's within you. or as N.T. Wright says, it's within your grasp from the first chapter of Mark.

0:59 Would you join with me in a moment of prayer before I try to preach? Eternal God and Heavenly Father, our hearts are filled with gratitude this evening for your goodness and grace in the life of your people here represented and beyond here. We pray together that the Word of God might do as you promised, that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So speak to us tonight by your Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen. man. My pastor, Dr. Matt Snowden, over here at the First Baptist Church in Waco, sometimes stands in for the children's sermon. And when I'm there, I like to watch the children transfixed as they sit down on the steps of the altar and listen to Matt. But I also found out that the number of theological professors in our church listen just the same way. They lean forward to see what he's saying. Now, I think there's a reason for that. If I could speak as a theologian and sometimes professor, we're pretty much left-brained people. We deal with concepts like consistent eschatology or realized eschatology or the already not yet kingdom or whether the Aramaic word malcuth means reign or realm or rule and all that, we need some help with our right brain.

2:34 So he helped us recently. And the word association test in Texas with the word king, the number one thing that they associated with was Burger King. I don't know what that says about the theology of Texans, but Pastor Matt pointed out that their slogan, have it your way for less, has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

3:06 No, if you're part of that kingdom, you have it his way, and it's certainly not for less. You know, frankly, as a lifetime Texas Baptist and listening to my own preaching and our preaching, it's fair and candid and frank to say that the phrase kingdom of God and the subject kingdom of God is not often at the centerpiece of what we have to say. We can talk about salvation, and we do, and church growth and evangelism and missional activities, but out there somewhere is the kingdom of God. I think that has to do with the fact that king is really not a natural combination with Texas. The phrase king of Texas just doesn't ring a bell. In fact, if anything, Gert Hofstetter, who's a psychological sociologist, he's a Dutch man, has studied individualistic and collective cultures all over the world for IBM.

4:06 him. He says the Australians are the number one individualist culture, but second is the United States. And if that's true, probably Texas is the most individualist of any state in the United States. If you don't think so, go up Austin Avenue here and you'll see plenty of signs for Texit. Exit now. That's another subject. If we think of a king, we may think of King Charles III. Now Chuck and I... we don't have very much in common a few things but one thing we do have in common is that we were born the same year and I spent a number of decades wondering which one of us would last the longest would I get to see him king or would he check out now that he's king I guess I can wonder about, will I be around long enough to see King Will or will I check out?

5:07 He's a reminder that earthly kings have an expiration date. Every earthly king has an end of reigning. But on a higher, holier, heavier level, the king of kings has no expiration date. And it's the center of the gospel. You look at the very front porch of the gospel in Matthews, Ancestry.com. Jesus is presented as a descendant of King David. The Messianic Psalms about the coronation of King were applied to him. At his birth, those astrologers from the mysterious east came and asked, What? Where is he? Is what? King of the Jews. And Herod was upset because he thought he wore that crown. at the beginning of his great sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. The very beginning, he blesses the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

6:07 And in that sermon, in his prayer, he says that that kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. If you go all the way to the back porch of the New Testament, Pontius Pilate is bewildered when he asked Jesus in a private interview. They say, you're a king. Are you a king? And Jesus said, you say so. And so Pilate said, I've written what I've written. And he put over, King of the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes it's been said that Paul invented a different faith. But if you look at the end of that, the last verse in the book of Acts, he's in his rented quarters there proclaiming and arguing about the kingdom. And if you go to the very back porch of the New Testament in Revelation 19, he comes as King of kings and Lord of lords. you can't get around the centrality of the kingdom now I was assigned to preach on the kingdom of God and that's a little bit like saying let's preach on heaven and earth time and eternity and you don't want me to do that long I'm going to give you some one-liners about the kingdom and I'll take my seat first of all the kingdom is a gift when Jesus announces it in the first words he speaks in Mark's gospel. He doesn't say build it. He says the kingdom of God is here. Repent and believe. The kingdom was here before us and without us, and it will be here after us and without us. He's king of a kingdom that's eternal. We don't build the kingdom. The kingdom builds us. We don't construct the kingdom. The kingdom constructs us. We don't support the kingdom. The kingdom supports us. It's a great reality that is given as a gift. In 1911, the Presbyterian William Merrill wrote a hymn. You may have heard it. It doesn't sing as much now as it used to be. Rise up, O men of God, the kingdom tarries long. Bring in the day of brotherhood and end the night of wrong.

8:13 Now, other than being a very gender-specific hymn, there's something else about that. The kingdom does not tarry. It's already here. We don't build it. It builds us. Let me give you a parable about that from something I experienced. I was preaching at First Baptist Church in Blytheville, Arkansas. It's up in a huge bend of the Mississippi River. The pastor asked me, would you like to go see the Mississippi at flood tide where no one sees it? Sure. We went down a little county road, and I wasn't prepared for the roar that I heard and the drama that I saw. It had overrun its banks. It was eating up farmland. I remember now the absolute sense of power that I felt with that mighty body of water. And I just supposed for a minute that I thought, you know, I'm going to build a little raft out of driftwood.

9:09 and launch it and go down that thing. What kind of absurdity would it be if I got on that river and said, man, I'm making this thing go? No, it begins up trickling in Minnesota, and by the time it gets down there, it's a mighty force headed toward the Gulf. I wouldn't make it go. It would make me go. Now, come close to me. At 16 years of age, when I began trying to preach the gospel, I launched a little raft on that river called the kingdom of God. It's carried me along. before too long. I'll get off that raft on the riverbank, but the river will go on. We need to understand that the kingdom of God is his gift, and it's already here. You're about the elephant going over the bridge with a flea in its ear. Seven-ton African elephant, a flea in its ear on the wooden bridge. It shook the bridge. The metal creaked when they got to the other side.

10:09 The flea said to the elephant, we shook that thing, didn't we? When it comes to the kingdom of God, we're a flea in the air, church. It carries us. And that's a warning that we not build our own kingdom, but let his kingdom build us. But let me move on a moment. Second thing I want to say, kingdom one-liner, that kingdom that is a gift is an invisible kingdom. In Luke's gospel, the 17th chapter, 20th verse. Our Lord spoke to the speculators and said, the kingdom of God comes without observation. Don't look here, look there. It comes without observation. That don't inspire us.

11:01 In Hebrews 11, that golden chapter in the silver book, it says, faith is what? The substance of things spoke for and the evidence of things what? Not seen. In 2 Corinthians 4.18, the apostle wrote to Corinthians, fix your eyes, scope out what you cannot see, because that's what lasts. Jesus told Thomas, blessed are those who don't see and believe. The kingdom of God comes without observation. Now, Jesus' ministry took place in a very visible kingdom, the Roman Empire where Tiberius, who reigned as emperor king from 14 A.D. until 37 A.D., bracketed the public ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. The name Tiberius was known everywhere in the Mediterranean basin in an empire of 100 million people, yet over on the far eastern edge of it in an area that was considered less than by its own people.

12:05 Can anything good come out of Galilee? Came a king that this world remembers when it's forgotten, Tiberius. And he started with what was an invisible kingdom. There's an effective story to me in A.N. Wilson's biography of Queen Victoria and Prince Consort Albert. They were out walking on the Osborne State on the Isle of Wight when they were suddenly caught in a rainstorm, a heavy rainstorm for that island surrounded by water. And they saw a hut, a little cottage, lean to over on the edge of the Queen's property. And they ran to it and knocked on the door. And a hermit that lived there didn't know who was visiting him. he let Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and Prince Albert into his little hut. He gave them tea, and they came and they went, and he never knew that royalty had been there.

13:06 Our Bible says he came to his own, and his own received him none. In fact, that kingdom is so invisible that Jesus told Nicodemus, remember Nick came at night, Nick at night, he came. And Jesus said, unless you're born from above, you can't even see the kingdom of God. It's an invisible kingdom to those who are not part of it. I don't want to strain this, but let me give you an illustration from nature if I could. In 1964, the physicist Peter Higgs posited that along with the other three forces in physics, electromagnetism the strong force the weak force there was another force there had to be that helped hold everything together and give it mass it was a computation it was just numbers on a piece of paper no one had ever seen it it was invisible it was a theory until in 2012 when on the border of France and Switzerland, they built a huge particle accelerator.

14:17 17 miles across, 100 meters underground, they smashed atomic particles together until in 2012 they finally saw that invisible thing that Higgs said existed even though they hadn't seen it. They took a picture of the Higgs boson. They knew it was there. They just hadn't seen it yet. Now, if that's true on a lower, lesser, lighter level, on a higher, holier, heavier level, someday this world who doesn't recognize that invisible kingdom is going to see that kingdom and that it's a reality. Now, it's here. It's just not seen. Deep in the hood where a slam lord owns a crack house, the kingdom is there. It's just not seen. At the end of a hospital corridor where a family is sobbing because of matriarchs, the kingdom's here.

15:10 It's just not seen. Over at the university where they seek truth, the kingdom is here. It's just not seen. Out at the McDonald Observatory where they look at the night sky and the nebula and the galaxies, it's there. It's just not seen. Or if they bend over a microscope and look at a single-cell paramecium, it's there. It just hasn't been seen. Right now it's an invisible kingdom, but it will be seen.

15:35 You know, here's the funny, not funny, I shouldn't say that, the tragic thing. about our great state. Here's two houses. Families very much the same and houses very much the thing in a subdivision. They go to the same kind of job. They drive the same kind of car. Their kids play the same kind of sports. They're the same in so many ways. But in one of them, there's an invisible kingdom and Jesus is Lord. And next door to them, that kingdom is not even recognized. It's our job to make visible that invisible kingdom so that people are born from above and they see the kingdom of God. But let me take my seat. The third thing I want to say, a kingdom one-liner. It's a kingdom of inherent power. Over in Mark's gospel, chapter 4, there are parables of the kingdom, and one of them is only in Mark's gospel.

16:30 Just a tiny little parable about the kingdom of God. in that parable farmer goes out sows a seed and evidently he was an insomniac farmer because he gets up at night and day looks at how that seed grows he sowed it but for some way he doesn't know how it sprouts there's a blade that's full corn in the ear now I don't like to give Greek lessons at conventions but there's an interesting word in that parable. It says the seed grows automatae. That gives us in English our word automatically. The seed has inherent power. The farmer can put it in the ground, but the seed itself. And Jesus says the kingdom of God is like that. You know, if you'd seen a mighty oak tree 60, 70 feet up in the air and you had never seen an acorn, and I came to you said brother sister here's an acorn this is where this tree came from you look at it you look at me you look at the oak and you'd think the cheese had fallen off my cracker I think I just made that up, but that's all right.

17:56 But no, because even in things we can see, there's a remarkable germinative seminal power that you can't explain. there was a Spanish galleon that sunk off the keys in Florida in 1620 it was full of gold that had been taken by colonial Spain taken from the Incas the Aztecs back to Spain but it sank only five people survived it but in in 1980 a cabal got together of business people and investors and they went down to find the gold and they found that gold but along with finding that gold, they found in a little test tube some wheat seed that had been at the bottom of the gulf for 400 years in an atmosphere without oxygen, anaerobic, in the dark, and it begged the question, if this were planted, would it grow? So they planted these 400-year-old seeds, and to the astonishment, even the biologists, they sprouted because there was a principle of life in them. That is the kingdom of God on a higher, holier, heavier level. It has inherent power wherever you find that kingdom of God. Remember in John 6 when Jesus had fed the 5,000 and they chased him around the lake and said, feed us again. And then he gave them a menu they didn't like.

19:29 Bless you, eat my flesh and drink my blood. And everybody left and he looked at the 12 and he said, are you going to leave too? And in that dramatic moment, what did Pete say? Where else should we go? You alone have the words of what? Life. The kingdom has inherent life. I wish I had time. I don't just to tell the stories of how over and over that's been demonstrated all over this planet. You may have read the book about the Alamo people of Ethiopia, fire on the mountain, Interior Sudan Mission sent missionaries there in 1936. They gave them the gospel of Mark and a few pieces of scripture, and then when Mussolini ran Haile Selassie out of Ethiopia, the missionaries left, and they lamented that their work would disappear. When they came back five years later, 48 believers had become 10,000, and they were left only with the gospel of Mark, no missionaries, no preachers, just the kingdom of God doing what the kingdom of God does.

20:31 He still does it. I joined TikTok a month or two ago. I think I'm the oldest. I didn't know it was that funny. I do think I'm the patriarch of TikTok. But you know in those algorithms, they figure out that I'm a Christian and I'm a preacher, so they start sending me all of the others. Now some of them are crazy as a dog in a hubcap factory, and I know all that. But others of them are tremendous stories. I have a friend I thought I'd never have on TikTok. Her handle is Holy Ghost Junkie. That's her name. Now we don't have a lot in common. When my hair is gray and falling out, hers is different color every day. I don't have any tattoos.

21:27 She's supported the whole industry, I think. The only time I ever got pierced was with a thumbtack. She's done more than that. But let me tell you something. I meet the Holy Ghost junkie every day now. She's given her testimony on TikTok. She was addicted incredibly. Her life destroyed in her early 20s. I couldn't even describe in any group what all her life had fallen into until three years ago she met Jesus in the kingdom of God. and now every morning walking in the dark she's making a video for TikTok how she's starting the day with Jesus and at night she encourages me to stay true to the kingdom of Jesus that is the power of the kingdom of God let me tell you what if she'd read anything else Plato's Apology or Aristotle's Rhetoric or Thucydides history or Herodotus or Pythagoras she would have put it down, but the power of the gospel is still inherent today. I've seen it on TikTok as the patriarch of TikTok. I'm going to say this and I'm going to sit down. I like to lean into this because I think it may be the most neglected right now. The kingdom of God is already, but it is not yet. There's an element of pure futurity in the kingdom of God.

23:07 Now, the imminent kingdom of God that is invisible and inherent in here is doing what it does, but that's not all of it. If we say the kingdom of God is already, the finishing of that sentence is it's not yet. If we say it's inaugurated, the finishing of that, it is going to be consummated. And I'd like to urge, particularly preachers here, as you preach the gospel, continue to preach the whole gospel, that this same Jesus is coming again in like manner, King of kings and Lord of lords. Now, maybe I'm missing it. When I was growing up, and I hope this isn't just an elder's astrology, I remember every Sunday night at the Connell Baptist Church on 4736 Bryce Avenue in Fort Worth, we heard he might come again tonight.

24:05 I used to go home every Sunday night praying. I don't know if I'm ready for that. 1970, Gloria Gaylor penned those words, the king is coming. Anybody remember that song anymore? and Bill wrote the music. Now, I know that's older kind of music. It's a different kind of anthem, but I don't hear as much of that anymore, and I think I know why. I'm going to get out on a limb, but that's where the fruit is. I want to tell you this. I think craziness about last things has muted and gagged us from talking much about them. The predictors, the speculators, the date setters, I could call their name out of charity I won't but you know who they are some of them gotten very rich doing it predicting I remember being on a dove hunt with some doctors at Travis Avenue in 1988 when whoever that guy was wrote 88 reasons the rapture will be in 88 and these brilliant physicians and surgeons were worried this might be our last dove hunt seriously that kind of thing has to some degree muted us and silenced us because we don't want the guilt by association with speculators.

25:20 But let me urge you this. You don't preach the whole gospel if you don't preach that blessed hope. Now, I grew up under a dispensational premillennialist. I came down and went to Baylor and studied with the father of Baptist amillennialism, Ray Summers. I belong to a church now that was pastored by B.H. Carroll, the postmillennialist. I wrote a dissertation on patristic millennialism, but I've kind of set all that aside. I've resigned the program committee. I want to be on the welcome committee. this same Jesus now you can't argue with this it's a simple program Mount of Olives Ascension Day what did those two in dazzling white apparel say this same Jesus will come again how in like manner well how did he go well personally he'll come back personally bodily he'll come back bodily What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 15?

26:21 He'll come in an instant. That word atomos in Greeks, in an atom of time, this same Jesus will come back personally, bodily, visibly. Let's not mute that. My dear colleague now retired, Dr. David Garland, warned against our preaching musty sermons all the time. And what David meant by that, Dr. Garland, is it's very easy to fall into eminent moralism, talk all the time to the church what we must do, ought to do, should do right now. And there the kingdom of God demands that we must identify with the distant power. We ought to speak truth to power. But if that is all we talk about, the gospel loses its hope. The hope of the gospel is that this same Jesus will come again in like matter. And if the kingdom is imminent now, there's the not yet of his coming again. It's very real to me.

27:17 I don't want to sound, you might think this sounds morbid or nostalgic or some combination of morbidity and nostalgia. It's not at all. I brought a funeral plot in Greenwood Cemetery in Fort Worth many years ago. It's at the corner of White Settlement and University, if any of y'all want to visit me later. But every now and then, I go inspect the property.

27:51 And it's not morbid. I go sit there, look around, look up, see how. but since I bought it first, I really didn't know who was moving in the neighborhood. Recently, I started walking around just to check the neighborhood out.

28:13 I had some wonderful surprises. I didn't know this. I had no idea about it, didn't cause it, didn't know it. I walked about 50 steps over to the left, and there's a beautiful big gray stone with a column on it and inscribed on it is the name of one of the finest believers I knew, Russell H. Dilday Jr. and Betty. And I said, my, I didn't know he was in the neighborhood.

28:45 I didn't know this. And I walked about the same distance the other way. Some of you will know this name. I didn't know it was there. Three pink granite columns. And it said Robert E. Naylor, Goldie, and I'm sure one day their brilliant missionary surgeon daughter Rebecca Han will be there. I said, goodness, I didn't know they were in the neighborhood. And I was walking back to sit at my plot and very close to it was the finest, most Christ-like layman deacon I ever knew. some of you knew him Joe T. Linneman was Mr. Travis and I said wow I didn't know who's in the neighborhood and I sat down and that plot and this isn't it's not morbid to me at all I hope you don't think it is I was thinking about that day I'm closer to it than ever you know the Bible describes it and you have read it hundreds of times at graveside we which are what are alive and remain? We'll not what? Precede those, but we'll be caught up in the air. I don't know whether we're going to go up. N.T. Wright worries about that. He says, if you go up in the northern hemisphere, then what do you do in the southern hemisphere? You go down. N.T. says we're not going to go up or down. We're going to move over into another dimension, but whether up, down, or over. I just, I was there the other day and I was thinking about Russell and Dr. Naylor, I wouldn't call them Robert in time or eternity, and Joe T. And I was wondering if we might all be together. You'll have to excuse this speculation, but these were dear people to me.

30:27 Wonder if someday I'd look over at a luminous, shimmering, transformed Russell H. Dilday Jr. You know, C.S. Lewis said it may be possible to think too much of our own glory, but not too much of somebody else's. And their shining restful, he kept his promise. Or Dr. Naylor, I heard you preach about it. He did it. Or Joe T., we used to sing at Travis, the king is coming. He came. Then I went and sat down in my plot, and the strangest song came into my mind. I didn't even expect it. Mr. Rogers, it's going to be a wonderful day in the neighborhood.