Episode 40
The Kingdom Is Here. Why We Keep Looking for Something Else
Are you still waiting for the Kingdom of God to arrive, or could it have been here all along? This episode challenges everything you thought you knew about the Kingdom, religion, and leadership—revealing how much of what we’ve built is based on missed expectations and outdated systems. Dive in to discover why Jesus’s vision of the Kingdom flips the world’s definitions of power, greatness, and success upside down, and how this could radically change the way you live, lead, and build community today. If you’ve ever wondered what it truly means to be a citizen in a Kingdom that’s already present, this is the conversation you can’t afford to miss.
"The kingdom of God is here—not as a religion or institution, but as a foundation that holds everything together." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 The Kingdom Already Here
01:09 NT in 90 Days
02:21 Four Episode Arc
03:46 Kingdom Arrived First Century
06:27 Upside Down Kingdom Values
10:36 Why We Miss It
15:38 End Times Anxiety Cycle
17:59 Jesus Plus Church Models
22:42 Celebrity Leadership Trap
26:26 Plural Elders Alternative
27:07 Elders by Character
28:03 Jesus Inverts Power
31:35 Strength in Weakness
32:38 Quiet Faithful Endurance
33:42 Kingdom Holds All
36:44 Blueprint in the World
39:33 Knowing the King
42:51 Kingdom Multiplies Scattered
45:55 Modern Misread Exposed
48:54 Love Ladder and Self Control
49:57 Politics Work and Stewardship
51:31 Build on the Foundation
52:34 Next Episode and Invitation
Transcript
The Kingdom of God is here.
Speaker:It arrived 2,000 years ago, not as a religion, not as an institution,
Speaker:not as a weekly event, as a kingdom with a different king, a different
Speaker:kind of power, and a foundation that holds everything together.
Speaker:But most of us, many of us, were taught it has not started yet.
Speaker:We were told it is coming someday, after a rapture, after a
Speaker:tribulation, after some future event.
Speaker:So we kept building.
Speaker:We built churches that looked like corporations, leadership structures
Speaker:that looked like Rome, religious systems that looked like the old
Speaker:covenant temple, and the whole time, the kingdom was already here.
Speaker:The foundation never moved.
Speaker:We just built over it.
Speaker:This episode is about what we missed and why it changes everything
Speaker:Welcome to Seek Go Create.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders.
Speaker:Recently, I have read the entire New Testament.
Speaker:I did it in 90 days, in the order it was written, not the order in your Bible, the
Speaker:order that the letters actually went out.
Speaker:And what I found was really cool.
Speaker:It surprised me, challenged me, changed the way I understand scripture, and
Speaker:it was just a really great deep dive for me here at about the 35-year
Speaker:mark of my walk with Jesus Christ.
Speaker:So this series is where I share those discoveries with you, and I
Speaker:encourage you to kinda do what I did.
Speaker:I don't want you to really listen to me and be entertained and all that.
Speaker:We'll get to that here in this episode.
Speaker:I want this to be your challenge to dig on your own.
Speaker:If you want the reading plan that I developed to do what I did, you can get
Speaker:that for free at k2m.foundation/nt90, and you could download it, you could
Speaker:read along, you can slice and dice it.
Speaker:I do kinda recommend that you try to go in order and try to go as quickly as
Speaker:you can, compress it, 'cause some cool stuff happens when you actually do that.
Speaker:The link should be down in the show notes.
Speaker:Go check that out.
Speaker:So, this right here, we're on episode 11 of this series of things that
Speaker:spun off from my reading of the New Testament in 90 days, and the title of
Speaker:this one is The Kingdom Is Here: Why We Keep Looking for Something Else.
Speaker:At the end of the last episode, I told you this one would be about kingdom
Speaker:leadership, what the New Testament actually says it looks like versus
Speaker:what we've built or how we lead today, and that is still in here.
Speaker:But when I started digging into the leadership question, it, turned into
Speaker:not one episode, but actually four.
Speaker:This is gonna be the beginning of sort of a four-episode arc.
Speaker:It fits well into all that we're doing here, but it's also, these
Speaker:four compacted are something that I sorta been working on- kind of
Speaker:all together, and they're meaty.
Speaker:They've got a lot to them, so we're gonna have fun with it.
Speaker:We're still gonna talk about leadership, but we're going to set
Speaker:it inside the larger reality first.
Speaker:And, we'll just talk more about that as we get into it because you
Speaker:cannot really understand kingdom leadership until you understand
Speaker:that the kingdom is already here.
Speaker:So let's start with that.
Speaker:Let's talk about the kingdom that Jesus described, and let's just dive into it.
Speaker:The kingdom was really the message of the New Testament.
Speaker:There were other things, we've talked about that in previous episodes, but the
Speaker:kingdom was really the primary message.
Speaker:And when you really read it in context, you really notice
Speaker:that the kingdom has arrived.
Speaker:It did arrive during that first century.
Speaker:In episode nine, we kinda covered this.
Speaker:There were 100-plus verses.
Speaker:I did a study a while back, you can go back to episode nine and hear
Speaker:more about it, on the Kingdom of God, and I counted 104 verses that were
Speaker:related to or referenced the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven.
Speaker:71% of those came from Jesus.
Speaker:They were out of the mouth of Jesus Christ.
Speaker:So in my opinion, we need to pay attention to those.
Speaker:The Kingdom of God seems to be his primary subject, and the New Testament
Speaker:describes it arriving in the first century, not waiting for a future event.
Speaker:The New Testament story is about the kingdom arriving, not, this is important,
Speaker:not believers being snatched away and going somewhere else and then a
Speaker:bunch of bad stuff happening on Earth.
Speaker:That is not the message in the story when you read it in context Most of
Speaker:us, myself included, were taught that the kingdom is gonna come someday
Speaker:after, I know you've heard this, after a rapture, after a tribulation,
Speaker:after some end times sequence.
Speaker:But the New Testament writers described events happening in their
Speaker:generation, in the first century.
Speaker:Jesus told his disciples, "This generation will not pass away until all these
Speaker:things take place." Matthew 24:34.
Speaker:You can go back to past episodes where we talk about this generation.
Speaker:He meant them, not us.
Speaker:The kingdom arrived on schedule within a 40-year window of when
Speaker:Jesus Christ spoke those words.
Speaker:The kingdom was not a place you go.
Speaker:It was a reality that you enter, a way of living under a different authority, and
Speaker:it began in the first century when heaven and earth started merging through the
Speaker:life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Speaker:That was the message that he portrayed.
Speaker:The merger is still underway.
Speaker:It's still going on.
Speaker:It was kind of the already but not yet kind of concept.
Speaker:The restoration, still expanding.
Speaker:And we're not spectators waiting for it to start.
Speaker:We are citizens Living in it right now.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about that more as this episode unfolds.
Speaker:What did Jesus actually say the kingdom looks like?
Speaker:Well, let's look at some things that were obviously wild and crazy when
Speaker:He spoke those in, you know, roughly 28, 29, 30 AD of the first century.
Speaker:But you know what?
Speaker:They're sorta crazy right now.
Speaker:Listen to some of the things that Jesus said.
Speaker:"The last are first, and the first are last," Matthew 20:16.
Speaker:That doesn't sound like the system of the world.
Speaker:"The greatest is the servant," Matthew 23:11.
Speaker:"Strength shows up in weakness." That wasn't Jesus saying that, that was
Speaker:actually Paul, but 2 Corinthians 12:9.
Speaker:But this is not weakness for weakness sake.
Speaker:This is a word that I think we really need to latch onto more.
Speaker:It's a word, stewardship, is what's really being described.
Speaker:Everything in the kingdom belongs to the king.
Speaker:You don't own it.
Speaker:We don't own it.
Speaker:You manage it.
Speaker:Your influence, your resources, your platform, your gifts, none
Speaker:of it is yours if you're in this kingdom that we're learning about.
Speaker:A steward has real authority, but the authority is delegated, not claimed.
Speaker:You don't go out and get it.
Speaker:It's gifted to you.
Speaker:That is the difference between kingdom power and what we'll call
Speaker:Roman power, or power in the world.
Speaker:Rome takes ownership.
Speaker:The kingdom takes responsibility, and it gifts stewardship.
Speaker:It gifts items.
Speaker:It gifts leadership.
Speaker:When you understand that distinction, weakness stops looking like a liability.
Speaker:It is the posture of someone who knows they are managing something
Speaker:that belongs to someone greater.
Speaker:And one of the things that I like to remind myself is that if I'm going to
Speaker:be a good steward of something that I've been gifted, I need to take really good
Speaker:care of it so that when I return it, it's in better condition or better shape or
Speaker:better state than when I received it.
Speaker:Another thing, "The meek shall inherit the earth." That doesn't make sense
Speaker:in the world system, Matthew 5:5.
Speaker:"Peacemakers are called sons of God" in Matthew 5:9.
Speaker:A lot of these are from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount where He
Speaker:really flips things around.
Speaker:He's got Pharisees in the audience.
Speaker:He's got disciples.
Speaker:He's got sheep.
Speaker:And He is really setting the stage for what is different now that
Speaker:He has come and walked the earth.
Speaker:The rich, young ruler that had great interaction with Jesus walked away
Speaker:because the cost seemed too high.
Speaker:The tax collector and the prostitute walked in Because they really
Speaker:had nothing left to protect.
Speaker:It's really the upside down or the reversed or the crazy, weird kingdom
Speaker:that doesn't look like anything that we think a kingdom should look like.
Speaker:Every value that the Roman world held, and when I bring up the Roman world, I gotta
Speaker:tell you that we could insert the First World culture, the Americanized culture,
Speaker:the, the, modern-day world system culture.
Speaker:We could replace it.
Speaker:I'm gonna use Roman world over and over because, as I've said before, I've been
Speaker:living or at least spending a great deal of time in the first century, so
Speaker:that's my vernacular that I'm using.
Speaker:But when I say Roman world, you can think, if you wanna project it to today,
Speaker:the world system that we're living in.
Speaker:So every value that the Roman world held, power, wealth, status, military
Speaker:dominance, Jesus inverted it.
Speaker:Caesar said, "I am Lord." The early Christians said, "Jesus is
Speaker:Lord." That was not a worship song.
Speaker:That was a political statement that could get you killed.
Speaker:The kingdom was not an add-on to your existing life.
Speaker:It was a replacement operating system.
Speaker:Different values, different measures, different definitions of success.
Speaker:Okay, now let's back up a little bit, and let's look at why we don't see it.
Speaker:Why don't we understand this?
Speaker:The disciples asked the same question.
Speaker:"Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?" That was in Acts 1:6.
Speaker:Think about what is happening in that moment.
Speaker:Jesus has risen from the dead.
Speaker:He's been teaching them for 40 days about the kingdom of God.
Speaker:That's what it says.
Speaker:And they are still expecting and asking for some type of
Speaker:worldly political takeover.
Speaker:Their expectations told them what the kingdom was supposed to look
Speaker:like, an earthly throne, Israel on top, them ruling beside him, putting
Speaker:themselves in an elevated position.
Speaker:They had the risen king standing in front of them- And they missed it because the
Speaker:picture in their heads did not match the reality in front of their eyes.
Speaker:That is how expectations work.
Speaker:They become the filter.
Speaker:You stop seeing what is there and start looking for what you decided should
Speaker:be there through our lens, through our expectations, through our mindset
Speaker:of what perfect looks like or what we really believe things should be.
Speaker:The disciples wanted Rome replaced.
Speaker:Jesus gave them something bigger and I believe something better, but they could
Speaker:not see it because they were looking for something specific in their minds.
Speaker:And when the specific thing did not show up, they assumed it had not started yet.
Speaker:And keep in mind, they were with him for three years prior to this.
Speaker:They had been hearing him share this message over and over again
Speaker:And they still didn't get it.
Speaker:So we should give ourselves a pass.
Speaker:I'm not trying to be critical.
Speaker:I mean, it took me 30-something years to begin changing this pattern,
Speaker:so we have to give ourselves some grace there because the same pattern
Speaker:runs through every generation.
Speaker:People build a picture of what the kingdom should look like, a political
Speaker:outcome, a perfect church, a moral society, a specific end time sequence,
Speaker:a government that looks a certain way and does things a certain way.
Speaker:And when reality doesn't match the picture, they do one of two things.
Speaker:They either decide the kingdom has not arrived yet, or they twist scripture
Speaker:to make it fit what they expected.
Speaker:Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Speaker:Both responses come from the same place, expectations that were
Speaker:never in the text to begin with.
Speaker:We keep scanning the horizon for something that looks like our
Speaker:perfect version of Rome and miss the thing that's been holding us
Speaker:up and growing under the surface.
Speaker:The kingdom arrived as a mustard seed, not a military campaign.
Speaker:It does not look like what most of us were taught to expect, and that is
Speaker:precisely why we don't really see it.
Speaker:We've got these goggles on or these blinders, these scales
Speaker:that keep us from seeing it.
Speaker:We were taught the kingdom has not started yet.
Speaker:If you believe it is future, you will not recognize it when it is
Speaker:present and when you're living in it.
Speaker:You endure the world instead of living in the kingdom living in the now.
Speaker:The posture produces exactly what it expects.
Speaker:People who believe in the kingdom but live as if Rome is still the only game in town.
Speaker:We confuse the kingdom with the institution.
Speaker:When the institution fails, scandals, hypocrisy, power abuse, people
Speaker:assume the kingdom failed, but the institution was never the kingdom.
Speaker:The recovery circle is running on kingdom principles.
Speaker:The startup business, I love those models, startup business, coffee shops,
Speaker:co-working spaces, those are some of the best examples I've seen of what I
Speaker:think kingdom living might describe.
Speaker:The startup business with servant leadership is running
Speaker:on kingdom principles.
Speaker:The kingdom has kept going.
Speaker:We just stopped looking for it outside the building with a steeple.
Speaker:We think it's in a place, but it's not.
Speaker:It's in us.
Speaker:The kingdom does not look like power.
Speaker:It looks like weakness, service, sacrifice, and like we
Speaker:mentioned earlier, stewardship.
Speaker:I think that's a powerful word.
Speaker:Trained by culture says, look up.
Speaker:Look for influence, platform, scale.
Speaker:The kingdom says, look down.
Speaker:The servant is the greatest.
Speaker:We miss it because we are looking in the wrong direction.
Speaker:Every generation says this.
Speaker:I know you've heard this.
Speaker:Just go on social media.
Speaker:It's never been this bad.
Speaker:The Christians under Nero said it during the 60s of the first century.
Speaker:The church during the plague said it during the Middle Ages.
Speaker:The Reformation church said it during the late Middle Ages.
Speaker:The Civil War church during the mid-1800s in the U.S., the Civil War church said it.
Speaker:Every century has voices declaring, we must be at the
Speaker:end because things are so bad.
Speaker:And every time people force the prophetic text to fit their moment.
Speaker:They read their anxiety into Scripture and they call it
Speaker:discernment or possibly prophecy.
Speaker:But if every generation felt like the worst one, maybe the feeling is
Speaker:not evidence that we are at the end.
Speaker:Maybe it is just what fear and anxiety sounds like and looks like
Speaker:in every century and every time.
Speaker:And if that is true, then the kingdom has been expanding the entire time.
Speaker:We can just look back and see it.
Speaker:Through every worst time ever It hasn't been the end.
Speaker:We've just kept going.
Speaker:The decline narrative does not come from the text.
Speaker:It comes from perspective.
Speaker:It could be in our minds, and it keeps us, it keeps you, it keeps culture from seeing
Speaker:a kingdom that has never stopped growing.
Speaker:That is why what we built looks like the way it does.
Speaker:We were handed a story that said the kingdom has not started, so we filled
Speaker:the gap with something familiar, something that looks like the world we
Speaker:already knew, and that is what we're gonna move into in this next section.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about what we built instead because we didn't
Speaker:understand what we were living in.
Speaker:And I'm gonna try to say this with a, with a sensitive heart, not trying to be
Speaker:condemning because I've been a part of it.
Speaker:But when you start stepping back and really looking at it, removing those
Speaker:expectations, removing what we've seen, reading the New Testament in
Speaker:context, in the correct historical context, this is what you start seeing.
Speaker:I've talked about this before, but there's something that's amazing to
Speaker:me called the Jesus plus pattern.
Speaker:You take a worldly model, you add Jesus to the label, you call it Christian.
Speaker:The structure underneath it though stays identical.
Speaker:Let's look at the CEO hierarchy plus Jesus.
Speaker:You've got a visionary, awesome, incredible leader.
Speaker:Let's just call it a visionary pastor.
Speaker:They've got one voice, but no accountability.
Speaker:That looks good.
Speaker:That's the structures that we have in many churches.
Speaker:Not really a kingdom structure though.
Speaker:And then you've got influence metrics plus Jesus.
Speaker:You've got a platform for the kingdom.
Speaker:That's where something becomes maybe celebrity Christianity.
Speaker:And of course, some of these are combined.
Speaker:These are not standalone that I'm addressing here.
Speaker:And then I'm a strategic guy.
Speaker:I love looking at business models and strategy and marketing plans.
Speaker:You got the strategic growth plans, plus you add Jesus in, and then
Speaker:you get the church growth movement, where you look at programs and what
Speaker:you can do to bring people in and maybe get people to move from one
Speaker:church to the other and attendance becomes the measure of God's blessing.
Speaker:Or we also hear things like baptisms.
Speaker:We had X number of baptisms last year, and that should tell you
Speaker:that we are doing God's work.
Speaker:I'm not saying all this is bad.
Speaker:I'm just telling you this is kinda how we've moved into- Measuring
Speaker:things, and it's a world system or a system of Rome that we really
Speaker:are just sprinkling scriptures in to, make it seem kingdom-like.
Speaker:And then you've got the motivational speaking plus Jesus.
Speaker:I've done this, okay?
Speaker:I'm guilty here.
Speaker:You know, you got the anointed preaching, where it becomes a gifted speaker that
Speaker:all of a sudden gets the microphone, and people are starting to be attracted to it.
Speaker:And again, that ties into celebrity preaching.
Speaker:It ties into the CEO model.
Speaker:All of this can be combined, okay?
Speaker:This is not standalone.
Speaker:But it's really performance and entertainment over transformation.
Speaker:It's kind of the model where people come, and it's comfortable and
Speaker:awesome, and we're entertained and not really transformed.
Speaker:And then another good one, this leads into strategy, brand building plus Jesus.
Speaker:You know, you got ministry branding, and I've been part of this.
Speaker:I've seen it.
Speaker:The leader or the message or the building or something becomes
Speaker:the product, and it's awesome.
Speaker:It's great.
Speaker:And listen, I love excellence.
Speaker:I love great music.
Speaker:I love all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:I love the smoke machines and the lights and things like that.
Speaker:But that brand plus Jesus can become the lead instead of the foundation.
Speaker:In every case, the structure most likely stays the same.
Speaker:Only the vocabulary changes, and the vocabulary makes it feel spiritual,
Speaker:which makes it harder to question.
Speaker:I noticed that in Bible school.
Speaker:It's like, "Don't question it, because we've got Jesus in our
Speaker:title, and we use the Bible often.
Speaker:So don't question what we're doing." I do not believe that that is a kingdom model.
Speaker:Again, not entirely bad, but it's using world system principles
Speaker:instead of kingdom principles.
Speaker:And then there's this thing that I'll call the leadership industry.
Speaker:And listen, this is part of what I-- This is where I made a lot of my money.
Speaker:I've been a leadership coach.
Speaker:I've done speaking.
Speaker:I've had groups, organizations.
Speaker:I mean, so I'm part of the problem here, so I'm pointing at myself.
Speaker:Jesus said, "It shall not be so among you" in Matthew 20:26.
Speaker:This is not a suggestion.
Speaker:It is a line.
Speaker:The modern Christian leadership conference can charge, you know, $500
Speaker:a seat to teach influence principles borrowed from the corporate world.
Speaker:But they have a devotional opener, or they Have scripture
Speaker:throughout, or they pull scripture.
Speaker:I've done this.
Speaker:They pull scripture to justify some of those influential principles
Speaker:that they're using in a system that's really a world system.
Speaker:Peter called himself a fellow elder in 1 Peter 5:1.
Speaker:Not a senior pastor, not a lead visionary, a fel- fellow elder.
Speaker:We're gonna look at that and what it describes later in this, in this episode.
Speaker:And then let's look at this term, the friend of the bridegroom.
Speaker:This is from John 3:29-30.
Speaker:John the Baptist was-- Listen, if there was ever a rock star in ministry, John
Speaker:the Baptist would have been it, okay?
Speaker:He, he was like crowds were coming to him and, you know, the Pharisees and
Speaker:the people of the temple structure, they were fully aware of it and, and the
Speaker:crowds and the people were following him.
Speaker:I mean, he had mega church influence and status in the first century, you
Speaker:know, in the mid-20s and the, and the late 20s of the first century.
Speaker:And, and he had the disciples.
Speaker:He had the attention.
Speaker:He had probably a huge social media following except, you know, social media
Speaker:looked different in the first century.
Speaker:By every modern measure, he was a successful minister.
Speaker:His response, listen to this, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
Speaker:We didn't hear him saying, "Listen, people are coming to me, so I need to
Speaker:protect this anointing." I'm about to say some cynical things that I've heard.
Speaker:"And, and, you know, I'm what people are coming to hear, and all these
Speaker:salaries and these buildings, they're all because of what I am created, so y'all
Speaker:need to listen to me and do as I say."
Speaker:No.
Speaker:He said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." He understood his
Speaker:role as what's called the shoshbin, the friend of the bridegroom.
Speaker:He was not the bridegroom.
Speaker:He was not the head.
Speaker:He was the friend of the bridegroom.
Speaker:His job was to introduce and then step aside.
Speaker:His joy-- Could you imagine that in modern ministry circles?
Speaker:Build up and then step aside, and then point people to
Speaker:smaller Christian gatherings.
Speaker:Imagine that.
Speaker:His job was to introduce, then step aside.
Speaker:His joy was hearing the bridegroom's voice, not being the center of attention.
Speaker:Paul actually lived the same principle, and he did it a little bit differently.
Speaker:He made tents.
Speaker:We saw that in Acts 18:3.
Speaker:He refused financial support from most churches.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Well, I think maybe he knew what that would have done to him.
Speaker:He might have known his own weakness.
Speaker:But he also said, "We have not used this right, but we endure anything rather
Speaker:than put an obstacle," he called it an obstacle, "in the way of the gospel." The
Speaker:obstacle, receiving money for the gospel.
Speaker:That's in 1 Corinthians 9:12.
Speaker:Financial independence gave him theological freedom.
Speaker:He could say hard things because nobody paid his rent.
Speaker:John decreased.
Speaker:Paul stayed free, both for the same reason.
Speaker:When the messenger becomes the attraction, the message gets smaller.
Speaker:The celebrity minister model gets this exactly backward.
Speaker:The matchmaker becomes the main attraction.
Speaker:The one who is supposed to point people to Jesus becomes the reason people show up.
Speaker:The test is simple.
Speaker:When people start going to Jesus instead of to you, is
Speaker:that a threat or is it the goal?
Speaker:And I love that question, and I think that leaders, especially in ministry,
Speaker:should ask that often of themselves.
Speaker:Let's look at kind of the alternative to the kingdom that has developed.
Speaker:And, I'm not gonna really say that the old way or this way is wrong, but
Speaker:I do want us to recognize it We're gonna be looking at things like plural
Speaker:leadership and not solo authority.
:23, Paul appoints elders, plural, in every church.
:5, appoint elders in every town.
:Never a single leader like we talked about earlier.
:Shared authority, mutual accountability.
:No one person controls the message.
:They're recognized by character, not credentials.
:Let's look at 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
:I love when Paul talks about this.
:They list the qualifications: sober-minded, self-controlled,
:hospitable, able to teach.
:Not a recent convert, well thought of by outsiders.
:Not one mention of a degree, a title, or really even skills or ability to speak.
:They do say ability to teach, but not dynamic, excellent speaking ability.
:The community recognizes who these people are by how they live.
:They're servants, not lords.
:We see that in Matthew 20:25-28, and that's our anchor.
:We're gonna start here.
:This is the text that settles it.
:let's look at Matthew 20:25.
:"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high
:officials exercise authority over them."
:Again, that's Matthew 20:25.
:Jesus is not describing a hypothetical.
:He is naming the system that his disciples already live inside, Rome.
:That is also a description of the temple structure, the
:religious structure of their day.
:Truthfully, if we were to admit it, that's the structure of most of our
:current churches, and of course, it's the structure of our government and
:the system that most of us live in.
:it, the, the disciples, they knew how it worked.
:Jesus names it so they can see it clearly before he inverts it
:and, and really rips it to shreds.
:He says, "Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you
:must be your servant." Matthew 20:26.
:He continues.
:This isn't humility language.
:This is a redefinition of greatness and really leadership.
:The word is diakonos.
:Diakonos.
:May have said that correctly.
:It's a table server, the person who brings the food, but it also is a
:steward We mentioned that earlier.
:Someone entrusted with managing what belongs to someone else.
:The authority is real, the responsibility is real, but the
:ownership belongs to the king.
:Jesus is saying the highest position in the kingdom is the one who manages
:faithfully without claiming ownership.
:Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to
:serve, that is in Matthew 20:28.
:He does not just teach the principle, He models it.
:The king serves.
:The one that doesn't have to serves, and that's our model.
:That's the precedent.
:Every top-down leadership model in the church is a direct contradiction
:of what the King himself did.
:28 continues, "And to give His life as a ransom for many."
:The ultimate service is sacrifice.
:The trajectory of kingdom greatness ends at the cross, not the stage, not the
:spotlight, not a leadership retreat, not a book launch, but it's giving your life.
:Peter echoes it directly.
:1 Peter 5:3, "Not domineering over those in your charge, but being
:examples to the flock." That word, it's a Greek word, not even gonna try it.
:Something like tatakiero?
:Something like that.
:Lording over, exercising dominion, the same word Jesus used.
:Peter heard it firsthand and repeated it decades later.
:He never forgot that line.
:42-45 records the same teaching.
:The repetition across the gospel tells you how central this was.
:Jesus did not say it once in passing.
:He made sure they heard it.
:And you know, a big message is strength in weakness, which doesn't really make sense
:in the Rome system, in the world system, but strength in weakness is important.
:2 Corinthians 12:9 "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect,"
:and that word perfect also means whole.
:It's made perfect in weakness.
:And, you know, we don't really like that word.
:I mean, generally, my personality, the way I'm wired, I don't like
:that word weakness, but it is a power word in the New Testament.
:It is the opposite of every leadership book on our shelves.
:The kingdom leader is not the one with the most influence.
:It is the one who has learned that the weakness is where God's power shows up.
:When they have weakness, God shows up and provides the strength that's needed.
:And then let's look at 11 Second Timothy 2:3-6, this, what I'll call
:the soldier, athlete, farmer reference.
:It's Paul's last letter.
:We're pretty confident of that.
:His final metaphors when he's sort of teaching Timothy, his final metaphors
:for kingdom living, a soldier who does not get entangled in civilian affairs.
:That means he doesn't get involved with all the mess in government.
:That might be a lesson for us.
:An athlete who competes according to the rules.
:In other words, you still adhere to the rules and the structure
:that you're operating within.
:And then a farmer who works hard and then patiently waits for the harvest.
:Those three examples are great examples for us.
:They're different.
:There's focus, there's discipline, there's patience.
:None of them are glamorous.
:None of them are on a stage.
:All of them involve quiet, behind the scenes, faithful endurance.
:All right.
:Let's now go to what we really want to see as the foundation that
:really holds all of this together.
:This is kind of, the kingdom is really not just an aside, not like a small
:alt- alternative that's just hiding.
:It really is the foundation underneath everything.
:We just may not see it as that.
:The principles work everywhere because the creator wove them into reality.
:Kingdom's not small.
:It really is the rock, the foundation that everything stands on.
:16-17 says All things were created let me re- let me back up.
:All things were created through Him and for Him.
:He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
:That Greek word there is synisteken.
:He is the glue, the binding force that keeps everything together.
:And I'm gonna go back to the scripture, all things, all things.
:It says all things three times in that scripture.
:Now, I don't know what all means, but to me it means all.
:Everything that functions, functions because it draws on His design,
:His creations, on His creation.
:20, "Through Him to reconcile all things," there it is
:again, all things, "whether on earth or in heaven." So that doesn't just mean
:earthly things, it means those things that are in the other realm, "making
:peace by the blood of His cross."
:All things are being restored to Him and through Him.
:That is not a future hope only, it is an active process.
:When Paul wrote that, Colossians was probably in the early
:60s when Paul wrote that.
:It was something that was in place then, not something that we're hopeful for.
:Now, it could be a already but not yet, something that's in process,
:but he spoke it in present tense.
:10, "God's plan is to unite all things in Him," all things,
:things in heaven and things on earth.
:The kingdom is the restoration or the reunification project, and it has
:been underway since the resurrection.
:The kingdom is not competing with Rome for market share, it is the foundation
:that Rome stood on without knowing it, and it is the foundation every functioning
:human community still stands on today.
:So let's look at why kingdom principles work even when the
:king may not be acknowledged.
:I mentioned earlier that I really love a startup business.
:I've always looked at examples of the kingdom within our world structure, and I
:love, like, coffee, coffee shop culture, where people just sort of hang out and
:there's a vibe there, co-working spaces.
:And a business startup to me is one of the best examples.
:It's got shared risk.
:People are committed.
:They're in it.
:They're working hard, probably without any thought- Of maybe their reward.
:I'm not saying that all the time, but they've got shared risk.
:There's usually a flat hierarchy.
:Everybody's just in it to win it.
:They're all together.
:They're servant leadership, and they're not accidentally stumbling
:into something that works.
:It, the startup, is borrowing from that kingdom blueprint.
:The founders may not know whose floor they're standing on.
:They may not even know the king, but the floor holds because of who built it.
:When we move into the next episode, we're gonna talk about principles
:within that kingdom and how we live it, and you'll see that more there.
:In a recovery cycle, you know, some of the, 12-step programs and things like
:that, they may recognize the king, they may acknowledge it, but many of them
:don't It's where people confess honestly, they carry each other's burdens, they
:come together as a group, they refuse to let anyone claim expert status.
:That's a kingdom architecture.
:That's operating on kingdom principles possibly without acknowledging it.
:16, in a folding chair, that's basically what's going on.
:No one in the room may call it that, but the principles still hold.
:And then also a mentor, just say in the, in the trades working alongside an
:apprentice, that is a kingdom principle.
:You know, hands-on, life-on-life formation.
:You know, I've often said as a coach, which I believe I'm wired to do, I think
:many people in the coaching world, that's one of the closest things to discipleship
:because you really are pouring yourself into another person, helping them become
:what we believe they're created to become.
:And there is a selflessness that's to that.
:There's some that's selfish.
:People wanna get paid and things like that, but that's actually how Jesus made
:disciples, almost like a coaching model.
:That method works because it was designed to work.
:It's a kingdom principle, sometimes without even knowing
:it's a kingdom principle.
:My point is the kingdom has been functioning and operating through
:those principles within some of these Roman or worldly systems
:Maybe without even knowing it.
:Let's talk about the nature of our king.
:The king, this is what makes this kingdom different from every other.
:The king, our king, doesn't really need the credit.
:He doesn't need the recognition to keep the foundation in place.
:The principles continue to work whether people acknowledge the source or not.
:Some people get offended by that when they're doing things, and they don't
:give Jesus the credit, and, you know, some athlete scores a touchdown, and
:they go to their knees and point up.
:Um, there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think Jesus is sitting
:there going, "Yeah, thanks. I really needed that." No, I, I don't think so.
:Jesus really desires obedience.
:He doesn't really crave the spotlight like most of us men do.
:Our egos need it.
:That tells you something about the nature of the one we serve.
:This is not an insecure ruler demanding loyalty to keep the system running.
:I'll tell you what, I've just been reading the history of Rome, and
:almost every emperor of Rome were so, I don't know, they, they didn't trust
:the people around them, that they had all types of people beheaded, killed,
:et cetera, all the time because they demanded loyalty to keep their power.
:That is not how Jesus functions, and, and that is not how the kingdom does.
:This is a creator whose design is so deeply embedded in reality
:that it functions even when people don't even know his name.
:But there is a difference between standing on the foundation and
:knowing whose foundation you are on.
:The principles work anywhere.
:The fullness comes when you recognize the king and submit to his authority,
:and you know that you are living and operating in his kingdom.
:The trajectory only begins when the allegiance is real.
:And so submission to the king is what distinguishes
:participation from citizenship.
:Every functioning community is drawing from kingdom principles to some
:degree, whether they know it or not.
:The question is not whether the design works.
:We know that.
:It works everywhere.
:The question is whether you know whose kingdom you are in and whether
:you are willing to submit to the one who holds it all together.
:I mentioned the coffee shop earlier.
:It's kind of using the blueprint.
:The recovery cycle that we talked about, the business startup.
:Kingdom citizens are the ones who know the architect and live
:under his authority on purpose.
:They carry the passport to that kingdom.
:This is not a line of exclusion.
:It actually is more of an invitation.
:The foundation is there.
:The principles are already working.
:The king is already restoring all things to himself.
:We heard that earlier.
:The invitation is to stop building on someone else's model and start building
:on the foundation that was there before Rome, before the temple, before
:any structure humans ever created.
:It's always been there, but it was reestablished at the cross,
:and it's been growing ever since.
:The kingdom multiplies.
:It doesn't need to scale, or it doesn't need strategy, or it
:doesn't need a branding-type plan.
:It is continuing to multiply because it doesn't do it from centralized authority.
:It does it via us, the citizens of that kingdom.
:Rome scales by absorbing territory and funneling power to the center,
:to Rome, and it does it with war and, and obviously power.
:The kingdom multiplies by scattering.
:4, persecution pushed people out, and everywhere they
:went, new communities formed.
:Antioch was not a Jerusalem franchise.
:It was its own community with its own leaders.
:The Holy Spirit and the local body sent Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:2 and 3.
:Jerusalem never authorized that trip.
:They just were sent, and they went.
:The kingdom does not need an earthly center, no Rome, no Jerusalem temple,
:no denominational headquarters.
:The center is Christ, present everywhere, distributing grace outward,
:not funneling resources upward.
:That is why the kingdom outlasts every empire and every institution.
:Rome fell.
:The temple was destroyed.
:Countries, powers have come and gone.
:Denominations rise, and then they decline.
:The foundation, the glue still remains.
:The principles keep showing up.
:The king keeps restoring and bringing all things to him.
:And here is something that I think is maybe the most important
:thing I'll say in this episode.
:The kingdom is not something that we need to build.
:It is the foundation that was already there.
:Our job is to recognize it, submit to the king, and stop layering
:world systems on top of what he already designed and created.
:The kingdom was not a future hope for the first century believers.
:It was the reality they began organizing their lives around.
:They were sort of forced to.
:They gathered in homes, shared meals, served each other.
:Their leaders worked with their hands.
:Saying Jesus is Lord inside the Roman Empire was not a
:worship chorus, it was treason.
:They said it anyway because they were not waiting for a kingdom to come, they were
:living in one that had already arrived.
:Leadership meant making yourself available, not making yourself important
:or shining a spotlight on yourself.
:That's probably something I need to hear often as I sit here and do a
:podcast and share this information.
:Let's look at where our modern misread kind of messes us up.
:Early in the episode, we named the core misread.
:We were taught that the kingdom is future So we've been building as
:if we are just managing and keeping things together until it arrives.
:That posture has shaped everything that's followed.
:The expectations never stopped.
:We talked about expectations earlier.
:The disciples expected a political throne.
:Today, we expect a moral majority, a Christian nation, a rapture on a
:schedule, a church that looks like success by the world's metrics.
:The picture changes, the pattern does not.
:We decide what the kingdom should look like, and when reality doesn't
:match, we force scripture into the shape of our expectations.
:And I said this earlier, I am guilty of doing that.
:We pull verses out of context.
:We build the doctrines the text does not support, but we make them work.
:We hammer them in, square peg, round hole.
:We call it discernment, prophecy, whatever, but it is just the same
:thing the disciples did in Acts 1:6, looking for what we expected instead
:of seeing what is actually there and the foundation that we're living under.
:The result is a Christ-labeled version of the system that Jesus
:inverted and spoke against.
:We took, "It shall not be so among you," and built exactly what he
:described as the Gentile model.
:The metrics never changed.
:Numbers, territory, influence, followers, budget, Rome's scorecard with a worship
:set opener and how many baptisms we've had this year as a measurement.
:"You are a royal priesthood," Peter said in 1 Peter 2:9.
:That got overridden by a system that put one person between the
:community and God, someone standing on stage with a microphone.
:The professional clergy class recreated the Levitical priesthood inside a
:covenant that was supposed to end it.
:I'm recording this on a Sunday, and all across the United States and the world,
:there are people standing on stages People in the audiences, hopefully you're not
:one of those, that are looking at the person on stage thinking that that person
:on stage is their link to hearing God and knowing what the kingdom is all about.
:I'm not saying that person's a bad person.
:I'm not saying don't listen to them.
:Do not think that you have to go through someone else to stamp
:your passport in his kingdom.
:You are a citizen with or without that person on the stage.
:All right.
:Let's talk about a few things of how it-- of kind of what it
:means for us, how we treat people.
:The kingdom is what we'll call the love ladder, faith moving toward love.
:Every interaction is an opportunity to climb or drift.
:Self-control is the hinge.
:You cannot love well if you cannot govern yourself.
:It also impacts how we do religion in church.
:If your church looks like a corporation with a spiritual veneer, the structure
:is from Rome, not from what Jesus taught.
:The test is simple.
:Are the leaders serving or being served?
:I went to a church once where there was a king and queen chair up on the stage.
:That should have been a clue, but no, I stayed there for years.
:Is the community forming disciples or collecting attendees
:and numbers and followers and gathering financial resources?
:And then let's look at, ooh, this is a tough one, politics.
:The kingdom was never allied with the empire, not Rome, not
:America, not any political party.
:Jesus refused political power when it was offered in Luke four, five through eight.
:kingdom citizens are ambassadors of a different government, not foot
:soldiers for a political agenda.
:Kingdom principles shaped America's foundation, but
:America was never the point.
:I know a lot of people will be bothered by that.
:We'll talk about that over the course of these next four episodes.
:America was never the point.
:The kingdom was here before any nation, and it will outlast every one of them.
:When we confuse the Christ and the country, we shrink the gospel into
:something it was never meant to be.
:How about business and work?
:Paul made tents.
:The soldier, athlete, farmer metaphors are about faithful
:work, not influence or platform.
:Kingdom leadership in business is stewardship, the word
:we talked about earlier.
:You're managing something that belongs to someone else.
:Your business, your team, your resources, none of it is yours.
:You hold it, you grow it, you give an account for it, and then possibly
:you give it back when you're done.
:That changes how you lead, how you spend, and how you treat the people
:who work alongside you, not climbing the ladder everyone else is climbing
:with a Bible verse on your desk.
:The kingdom Jesus described was upside down.
:The last first, the servant greatest, strength in weakness, and
:we flipped it right side up again and called it Christian leadership.
:The text is still there.
:It still says what it says.
:The question is whether we will build according to the blueprint or keep
:renovating, building, and really, making Rome our structure and our system.
:The kingdom that Jesus described doesn't need a building, doesn't really
:need a CEO, doesn't really need a leadership conference or brand strategy
:or six-figure salary to function.
:It needs stewards, people who manage what belongs to someone
:else and do it faithfully.
:Serve instead of dominate.
:Decrease so he can increase.
:Build on the foundation instead of building Rome or feeling as if you've
:got to build Rome to make things happen.
:In the next episode, boy, this has been a lot here, I know, but this continues.
:In the next episode, the kingdom is now I'm gonna continue building on this.
:I'm gonna walk through the specific instructions the New Testament gives
:to people living in this kingdom.
:We've looked at a few of them here, and we'll continue with that, but we're
:gonna look at what Jesus and the apostles actually told us to do, including a
:really cool framework, Peter gave us for what kingdom growth actually looks like.
:It's a ladder.
:It's not what got added later.
:The text actually says is what we're gonna look at.
:It is clearer, simpler, and really more demanding than most of us were taught.
:I'm gonna continue reminding you, go get the reading plan, k2m.foundation/nt90.
:It's really been the journey that's triggered so much of this for me.
:I didn't know what I didn't know until I read the New Testament in
:context and forced myself to do it in 90 days, and I even wrote the plan
:to put it in the order that it was written in because I couldn't find one.
:That's what you can get if you go to k2m.foundation/nt90.
:Please read it for yourself.
:You do not need to believe what I'm saying.
:I mean, I'm hopeful that I'm being a good steward of what I'm sharing
:here, but go read it for yourself.
:See if the kingdom you find in the text matches the one that you hear
:about or that you think exists.
:The kingdom arrived.
:We built something else on top of it.
:The foundation has not moved.
:It's still here, and it is still the only thing that holds.
:So it's been a cool episode here.
:I am Tim Winders.
:Please keep digging, keep studying, keep searching on your own.
:Seek, seek, seek.
:We'll see you on the next episode.
