Jesus Shared and Jesus Testified

What did Jesus Do?

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.
Matthew 13.33

I remember when I was young I used to be fascinated by what used to be called “travelogues.” Though it was fifty years ago now, I recall watching a program called “John Gunther’s High Road” which fascinated me with images and descriptions of kingdoms and lands that Gunther had visited, but I could only dream about. Ever since then learning about new places, studying maps, and occasionally getting to travel has always excited me. I guess you could say I owe much of this interest to John Gunther.

The Bible is certainly not a travelogue. But within it, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, are what we could call “Tales of the Kingdom,” brief descriptions of the kingdom of God shared by someone who had firsthand knowledge of his subject—Jesus, the Son of God. Take Matthew 13.33, and the description of the kingdom as leaven. Until Jesus spoke these words I daresay few people, if any, would have ever thought of yeast when asked what they thought of the kingdom of God!

But people would have been familiar with the kingdoms of the world, in particular the rich and powerful kingdoms like Rome, which dominated and controlled so much land and so many peoples. What kingdom could ever be greater than or more pervasive than Rome, which spread from Hibernia and Britain, through Europe, controlled all the Mediterranean, and spread on through the Middle East?

The Lord inspired his listeners with a tale about a kingdom that, though as small and insignificant as a pinch of leaven, would so work in the world as to influence the entire world like no other kingdom, just as that leaven would affect three large measures of flour. Now, at the time Jesus spoke these words Rome would not have given them any note, much less been impressed by them or the speaker, even still less threatened by them. Yet, though Rome would execute Christ on a cross, less than three hundred years later, the leaven of the kingdom of God would so work as to convert a Roman emperor, Constantine, and transform the pagan empire into the first Christian kingdom. All because Jesus came to testify and to share his “travelogue,” his knowledge of the kingdom of God.

John Gunther’s stories of exotic far-off lands of this world fascinated me as a child, but much more than those travelogues, the words of Jesus, what he testified to and what he shared about the kingdom of God, planted in me a love for that kingdom which, though it is as they say, “out of this world,” has entered into and transformed this world,

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Revelation 11.15

At a time when many kingdoms of the world still strive for ascendancy and domination, and when faiths such as Islam appear to grow and spread even while the influence of Christianity seems to be waning in many places where it once flourished, many people no doubt wonder about the kingdom of God. Like travelers who have visited foreign lands and returned with fascinating and powerful images able to convert and transform individuals and empires, we have the opportunity to tell our own “tales of the kingdom,” to testify and share with those who are lost and unsaved. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4