Kingdom & Jesus' Beginning (Lesson # 7)

 In discipleship overview, I explain what it means to “seek first the Kingdom.”  Seeking the kingdom is about 2 things: expanding it & strengthening it.  When you meet a person, seek to understand that person from God’s perspective.  If the person is a born-again, committed disciple of Jesus, then your job is to encourage, motivate, equip and spur this person on to love and good deeds.  If the person isn’t a disciple, you’re job is to make them a disciple and help them then to enter the kingdom via the rebirth: baptism.  If the person is hurting, broken, struggling, then your job is to help them recover.  With this in mind, all people in the world fit into one of these three categories: 1.      they’re outside the kingdom (needing in), or 2.      inside the kingdom (needing strength) or 3.      wounded; both in and out of the kingdom (needing healing) And God has put YOU into their life to help.  That’s why YOU exist (Ephesians 2.10)   We also spent a short time discussing one of God’s great gifts to disciples: That He allows us to repent and be born again.  Repentance is nothing more than change, and we’re born again when we’re washed clean and filled with the Holy Spirit in baptism.  This marvelous thing, repentance and baptism are like the cure for a disease we all share.  When Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness and all who looked at it were saved, so God has allowed His son to be lifted up on a cross and all who will be buried with him in baptism can receive this new birth of water and spirit and become new creatures.  (See John 3 & Romans 6)   In Luke we take a look at Jesus’ first sermon, when he read Isaiah and commented on it.  Then we see that in each of the cases so far … things have been said about Jesus or John the Baptist that are much more than grand, vague statements … they’re actually clues for us about the specific things these men were to do.  If we compare these passages with what we see they actually did, it’ll show us what we should be doing, too.