Vineyard Church of Knox County
Breakthrough of Freedom
Sermon Audio from Sunday, March 5, 2006 — The Kingdom is central to the life and ministry of Jesus - he proclaimed it, explained it, passed it on to his followers - so it is central to the life and ministry of the Vineyard. The Kingdom of God is the foundation for everything we do in the Vineyard. Recently the National Director of the Vineyard said, "We are not a healing movement; we are not a worship movement; we are not a seeker movement; rather, we are a Kingdom of God movement." In other words, all that we do and say, all that we teach and how we minister in the Vineyard is built on the foundational truth of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. So, what we believe about healing is founded on our understanding of the Kingdom of God. And it is the foundation of all of the Christian life. So, a proper understanding of the Kingdom of God is necessary if we want to fully experience the eternal kind of life the God offers to everyone here. The series will bring us to an accurate understanding of the significance of the Kingdom.
We learned last week that the Kingdom of God broke through in the person of Jesus. At his baptism the heavens were torn open to pour out the future onto the present. The future destiny of the earth is a destiny of healing, and wholeness, a destiny devoid of sickness and death. That future overlapped our age in the person of Jesus. It's as if the earth was under a cloud of darkness and the smell of mold when the shutters on the windows were thrown open to welcome in the light of God and the fresh air of the kingdom of God. The rest of the Gospel of Mark is the portrait of the consequences of the arrival of the Kingdom. In other words, what Jesus does and what he says paints the picture of the in-breaking Kingdom. As N.T. Wright explains, "Jesus soon became better known for healing than for baptizing. And it was his remarkable healings, almost certainly, that won him a hearing. He was not a teacher who also healed; he was a prophet of the kingdom, first enacting and then explaining that kingdom." We'll consider three scenes in the ministry of Jesus in which he demonstrates the kingdom brings freedom from oppression, sickness, and death.
