In the sermon 'The Kingdom of God Comes Near' by Peter Allison, the focus is on the nearness of God's Kingdom and its characteristics. The sermon begins with a biblical passage where Jesus sends out seventy disciples to prepare the way for Him, emphasizing the great harvest that requires laborers. It highlights the spiritual nature of the Kingdom, contrasting it with worldly concepts of peace, such as disarmament proposals by President Kennedy. The Kingdom of God is described as internal, where Christ rules in believers' hearts, and is characterized by righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. The sermon stresses the importance of prayer for more laborers and the spiritual tools needed for the Kingdom's advancement. It also warns of the serious consequences of rejecting the Kingdom's peace offer. The sermon concludes with a call to rely on spiritual resources and the assurance of God's unstoppable Kingdom.

I'd like to begin reading at verse 1. After these things, the Lord appointed seventy others Also, and sent them two by two before his face, into every city and place where he himself was about to go. Then he said to them, Harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labors into his harvest. Go your way.

Behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves, carrying neither money bag, napsack, nor sandals. And greet no one along the road, but whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there your peace will rest upon it If not it will return to you and remain in the same house eating and drinking such things as they give for the labor Is worthy of his wages Do not go from house to house. Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you, and heal the sick there, and say to them, The kingdom of God has come near to you. But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say the very dust of your city which clings to us, we wipe off against you.

Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you Capernaum who are exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you hears me. He who rejects you rejects me. And he who rejects me rejects him who sent me." Then the Seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are made subject to you, but rather rejoice because your name is written in heaven. May we long for His commandments, as one who pants with an open mouth longs for air. Almighty Heavenly Father, your Word is truth.

Sanctify us by it this morning. Open its meaning to us. And open our hearts, and open our eyes and ears by the powerful and supernatural work of your Holy Spirit that we might discern those things that are spiritually discerned. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips, that they might proclaim your truth. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, yesterday I listened to a, or watched actually a speech that John F. Kennedy, President Yesterday I watched a speech that President John F. Kennedy gave to the United Nations on September 25, 1961. It was a black and white video As he addressed that body and the bulk of his talk Was about peace He spoke for probably 30 or 40 minutes back in a day when presidential speeches actually said things. The bulk of the talk though was about peace and bringing peace to the world.

How was he going to bring peace to the world? He was proposing to bring peace to the world through the abolition of all arms and armaments, through the destruction of all weapons and weapon delivery systems, so that no nation on the face of the earth would have any military strength to attack another nation. The only people who would have armies or weapons would be the United Nations itself. Now simultaneously with President Kennedy's speech at the United Nations, the State Department, which is part of his executive government, The State Department released a report called Freedom from War. It was the title of the report.

It was basically a printed version of the President's speech. And this report set forth four goals that would be true or characterize the end state that these people had in mind. And here were their four goals, their four end states that they desired. That nations would only have enough force to maintain internal order, you know, to arrest the speeders, the people that weren't wearing masks or the other things like that. Secondly, that all nations would be required to provide troops to the United Nations.

Third, the manufacture of all arms would be completely prohibited. And fourth, the military power of the United Nations would be strong to enforce peace and the just settlement of differences in a disarmed world. Now anyone who believes these ideas has a very gross misunderstanding of the source of war and conflict. They have what in the nuclear navy we call a gross conceptual error. Where does war come from?

War doesn't come from weapons. It doesn't come from weapons of any sort. It doesn't come from guns or tanks. And it doesn't come from even weapons of mass destruction that everybody fears. James tells us that wars come from within.

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desire for pleasures that war in your midst? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war James 4, 1 and 2.

The many wars of the 20th century were caused not by weapons of mass destruction, They weren't caused because of bullet manufacturers and gun manufacturers. They weren't caused by the makers of tanks. They weren't caused by the existence of tanks. The many wars of the 20th century were caused by conspirators seeking their own pleasure, as James says, in the form of wealth and global dominion. Conservative estimates put the number of deaths in the 20th century caused by this lust for power and dominion at over 200 million people.

Hundreds of millions of people. Something the world had not seen on a scale like that in a long time. The 21st century is starting out a little better. But Jesus Christ came to bring peace on earth. Leviticus, which spells out the basis of how we can have fellowship with the Holy God.

The Holy, Holy, Holy God. Talks about peace more than any other book in the Bible other than Isaiah. Which of course is another book about Christ coming. And about the kingdom of Christ. The kingdom of God that was coming.

Psalms is another book dealing with the Messiah Christ that also speaks a lot about peace. And Jeremiah, which speaks about the coming of God's kingdom, the New Covenant. Zacharias speaking by the Holy Spirit prophesied that Christ came to give light to those in darkness and the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. Jesus Christ has come to bring peace. The angels that announce His birth that we sing about, They sang glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.

On earth peace. Jesus told His disciples shortly before His crucifixion, Peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

You see, Jesus Christ is the Prince of peace. And His kingdom, He sent out these 70 to proclaim His kingdom is a kingdom of peace. Paul told the Romans, the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God, Jesus summed up as righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. So we are talking about the kingdom of God this morning as Jesus sent out these 70 others to proclaim that the kingdom of God had come near.

What is the Kingdom of God? We should define this, what we're talking about. Well, Jesus gives a definition a little later in Luke 17, a few chapters later, when the Pharisees asked him when the Kingdom of God would come. They were asking, when will we see an army marching through our streets, pushing the Romans back to Italy? And Jesus said, kingdom of God does not come with observation.

You can't see it in the streets like that. It doesn't look like that. It doesn't look like what you're thinking. There's no army with tanks and mortars. Nor will people say, look, there it is.

Or look, over there it is. He said, for the kingdom of God is within you. The kingdom of God is when Christ rules in our hearts within us. When Christ rules in our hearts, then our wills are submitted to His wills. Our desires are His desires.

Our goals are His goals. Our words are His words. The fruit in our life is the fruit of the Spirit. That's the Kingdom of God. That's the Kingdom that conquers every other Kingdom upon this earth.

That's the Kingdom of which there is no increase of the government. See the world's peace that the United Nations is seeking to bring is a counterfeit peace. Satan is the great counterfeiter, The great deceiver. He tries to imitate. But Jesus Christ is the truth.

Then the peace of His Kingdom doesn't come by disarming us. The peace of His Kingdom comes as we are armed with the armor of God, so that we are able to overcome our flesh, our own sinful flesh. So we are able to overcome with the armor of God this world. So that we are able to overcome with the armor of God this world. So that we are able to overcome with the armor of God that we are called to put on, we are called to arm ourselves with.

We are able to overcome the evil one who drives the conspiracies of the global deep state. Make no mistake about it, these conspiracies that are all around us, and there are many of them, they are driven by the evil one. Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 9, of the increase of his government, referring to Christ, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever.

Of the increase of His government, of the increase of peace, there will be no end. And you can be sure that this will happen, because the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform it. And if God is for us, brothers and sisters, who can be against us? Who? There is no army big enough to withstand the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Christ, and those who are armed with His armor.

So let's look now at what Jesus teaches these seventy other disciples about his kingdom that has come near, and which they were sent out to proclaim. We see in verse 2 that The kingdom of God is built by laborers who are in Christ's service. Laborers who are sent by Christ, the Lord of the harvest. The kingdom grows through laborers. Now in thinking about laborers, we might be tempted to stop at missionaries who go into foreign lands, or maybe people that are, like myself, ministers of the gospel.

And those are certainly a key component of the labors of the harvest. But they're not the only labors in the harvest. Yes, there is the ordained office, But there's also the general office. All believers have an office. There are no, in that sense, lay people laying around in Christ's church, in His Kingdom.

And so there are many labors in Christ's Kingdom, both in the special office, but also in the general office. Parents teaching their children, parents having children, are raising up laborers. Businessmen acting truthfully, acting in kindness, acting in meekness, which is strength under control. Judges condemning the wicked and justifying the righteous. These are all aspects of the kingdom.

These are all people who, to the extent that they are doing these things, are with Christ. They are labors in His vineyard. The kingdom needs more laborers. The kingdom needs more laborers. The kingdom needs more laborers.

The laborers are few, Christ said. Pray more are needed. So pray. It's the next thing we see about the kingdom. The kingdom advances through prayer.

So pray, Jesus said. Pray that the Lord would raise up more laborers to send into His harvest. Now God doesn't need us, doesn't need our labor. He made the earth without any help from us. He made us without any help from us.

He holds the earth in existence without any help from us. He stretched out the heavens without any help from us. He stretched out the heavens without any help from us. He laid the foundation of the earth without any help from us. But the Lord has ordained that his kingdom would be advanced through labors, through labors and through prayer.

So he calls us, he commands us to pray. Pray that the Lord would raise up laborers to send into his harvest. And in the next chapter, when the disciples asked him, Lord teach us to pray, this is what he teaches them to pray. Pray that his kingdom would come. In the prayer that he taught his disciples, it begins with, hallowed be your name.

That's the first petition. It's the overarching petition of all of our life that the Lord would be hallowed. But the very next petition, the means of that hallowing His name, is that His kingdom would come. That's what we're to pray for. And so what are we praying for when we pray that His Kingdom would come?

Well, we're praying that Satan's Kingdom and the Kingdom of Sin would be destroyed. Satan's kingdom met its greatest defeat in the death and resurrection of Christ. Through death, Christ destroyed the power of Him that had the power of death. Christ in His death destroyed him that had the power of death, Hebrews 2. Satan's kingdom is destroyed when the plans of his co-conspirators to silence the church, to defeat the gospel, to bring death and injustice are exposed defeat it.

Satan's kingdom is destroyed. Satan has come to bring death. And where his plans go forward, you see death on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions of people. Pray that His Kingdom may be destroyed.

Pray for victories of believers over sin and Satan's temptations. All the graces that we as believers, as those who are in Christ, all those graces that we exercise in the comforts that we experience, These things represent a strengthening of the Kingdom of God. Those graces, those fruits of the Spirit, love and joy and peace, and long-suffering, patience, and kindness, and goodness, and faith, and gentleness, and self-control. These are the fruits of the Spirit. We need to pray that the Lord would arm us with His armor.

That our graces might be expanded, because that's advancing the Kingdom of God. We need to pray thoroughly for the propagation of the Gospel in our neighborhood, in our county, in our country, in foreign lands. It's all important. We need to pray that Christ would be present in His church and that He wouldn't take His Spirit from us, but that His Spirit would be poured out in greater measure on us, that we would know Christ more, love Him more. We pray that the church would be furnished with gospel officers and the gospel would be more fully taught, more accurately taught, more widely taught, more powerfully taught, with greater zeal and greater effect.

We pray that the church would be purged of her idolatry, of her statism, of her apathy, of her ignorance, of her doctrinal errors, of her carnal nature, and that she would seek first Christ's Kingdom. We can pray that the Holy Spirit would fall upon our offspring, upon our children. That they may spring up as plants watered by a river, a stream of water. That they would speak with their own mouth. They would covenant themselves with the living God.

And we need to pray for more laborers, disciples that are, as we saw two weeks ago, not self-serving, not uncommitted, or not those that are having second thoughts about their calling and regrets. We need to pray that the Lord would raise up more labors. Now where do those labors come from? Well, they come from families who understand their place in Christ's Kingdom, and who understand their role, their very, very significant role, and who are willing to go through the labors and the travails of raising children, of bearing children and raising them. As we saw the church decline in the 20th century, One of the things that came with it is a great declension in the size of families.

People were just unwilling to be inconvenienced. They're unwilling to be inconvenienced. They didn't think children were necessary. They said, what can children bring to me? How can they further my enjoyment of life, my pleasure?

And the answer is not much. They take a lot of work. They're trying. They're very sanctifying. And so there was a great reduction in the church among those willing to have children.

We need to pray that the Lord will raise up more labors. I think we have seen in this church a revival of that aspect. The next thing that Jesus teaches about his kingdom was that the resources of his kingdom were spiritual and not physical. Notice he says carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals. Why?

You need sandals to walk, you need food to eat, you can't live without food, you need money to buy these things. But Jesus says, don't take any of those things. Jesus was teaching his disciples that the tools of the kingdom are spiritual, they are not physical. These things are not necessary for the advancement of his kingdom. The Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

He knows all the gold of this earth. That which we've mined and refined and that which we haven't. It's all His. He knows where it all is. And He supplies it to those who need it as they need it.

And so Jesus was teaching his disciples, these things are not the first things that you need. Your Lord, I will supply them to you. God can and will provide all of the money and the food and the resources that we need in building His Kingdom. This isn't saying that God doesn't use these things or that somehow if you become a disciple of Christ, you can just live off of air and don't need to eat. It's saying just the opposite.

All these things that we need, God will provide. God will provide. But also, kingdom business is urgent business. It's urgent business. Greet no one along the road.

They had a mission. They had a goal. They had an objective. They were to go out to these cities where Christ would be going to prepare the way to pronounce, to proclaim the Kingdom had come near. The Kingdom of God had come near.

And that was urgent business. They weren't to greet people. As they went on the road. They were to be focused, you know when you greet people you you stop and you talk And you you what we say chew the fat is that an old phrase? You have idle conversation at the drinking fountain, well I guess not this year, they closed them all down.

But, that's what he's speaking about. There's urgency here. You're not to stop and chat with people, greet people. There's a necessity about this work. The kingdom of God offers peace to families.

When they went to a house, they were to say, peace to this house. Notice there are no qualifiers here. It wasn't like go and if the house is worthy of your peace, if they do X, A, B, C, D, X, Y, and Z, then offer your peace. No. First, first offer this peace.

Peace to this house. In the kingdom, Christ offers peace to his enemies who receive Him, who bow before Him. It is not offered to those who are worthy of His peace. It is offered to those who are unworthy. Those who don't receive Christ's emissaries are rejecting Christ.

Those who don't reject Christ are rejecting the one who sent Christ, the Father who sent him. Those who do not receive Him, this offer of peace returns, unfilled. First say, peace to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it. And if not, it will return to you." We have that same principle, not only in the offer of the Gospel, and that's A principle that was encapsulated in the rules for warfare in the book of Deuteronomy.

When Israel was to go to a city, they were to first offer it terms of peace. They weren't just to go and attack it without first having offered them a chance to surrender and yield and save their life. It was only if they rejected the offer of peace that they were then to proceed to destroy the city. Christ's kingdom comes offering peace. Now these disciples, these 70 others, these emissaries that were sent out to proclaim the kingdom is near, they were instructed to live from their work, to live from the gospel.

Eat, remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give you, for the labor is worthy of his wages." Now I mentioned earlier that there is the ordained office, or the special office, and the general office. So not everybody is ordained to the special office. These were 70 people that were specifically commissioned and sent out, like the 12 disciples. They had a special calling. For those who are in that special office, Jesus says, you are to eat from your labor.

The labor is worthy of his wages. And Paul said the Same thing to the Corinthians, that God had ordained that those who preached the gospel in that special office should live by the gospel. They should be paid accordingly. But the other side of this is that the disciples were not to go from house to house. They weren't to say, ah, you know, there's a bigger house over there.

Their food is a lot better. They have nicer cars. I'm gonna go live over there. Thank you for your help. I'm going over there.

No, They weren't to do that. They weren't to go from house to house, but rather they were to stay at the first house that they went to. In other words, their focus was not to be on amassing wealth, their focus was not to be on climbing a ladder and getting more and more, But their focus was to be on their work of proclaiming the kingdom and they were to stay whatever house they went into And they were to eat whatever they were given Without asking questions Now the the kingdom of God also brings health. When they went to a city, whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you, and heal the sick, and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you." They were to heal those who were sick and say, and connect that healing to the kingdom of God having come near to them. It came near because they were experiencing the fruit of that.

Those people that were healed may or may not have been those in whom the Holy Spirit dwell. There were many people who were healed that had no faith of their own. But the kingdom of God had come near to them because they reaped the benefit. They reaped the benefit of the peace and the freedom that come through the gospel of Jesus Christ, that come from his kingdom. When the new heavens and the new earth is described in Revelation, it's described as a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and in the middle of its street, and on either side of the river was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And there would be no more curse. The leaves of the tree were the healing of the nations. The kingdom of God comes bringing peace. It comes bringing healing to the nations. Not just healing from war, which it does bring, it comes bringing healing to our bodies.

Because this is, Paul said we've been saved in this hope, This hope of the redemption of our bodies. But lastly this morning the kingdom of peace is not without sanctions It's not without sanctions The rejection of the kingdom of God and its offer of peace on its terms, on Christ's terms, which is total surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, total and unconditional surrender. The rejection of that offer of peace is very serious. It's very serious. Sodom is that city that was destroyed, you remember, by fire and brimstone pouring out of the sky, burning it up.

So the city was just a smoking oven. City of Sodom was a wicked place. The angels that went to deliver Lot, you remember, are in the house. And the men of the city, the worthless men, the wicked men of the city, come banging on the door demanding that these visitors be given over to them, that they might treat them unimaginably. And these messengers, these angels, strike them with blindness.

But it's a picture of a completely wicked city, given over to abominations. And all of the selfishness that comes with that. And yet Jesus says that these cities, to whom the kingdom of God has come near, but who have rejected the Prince of Peace, that it would be more tolerable for them, for Sodom, in the day of judgment than it would be for these cities. Whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say the very dust of your city which clings to us, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this, that the Kingdom of God has come near you.

The rejection of the offer of peace from the Prince of Peace is most serious. It's most serious. And if you are sitting here today, then you have come near the Kingdom of God. You have benefited and been blessed by it, like the people that were healed in these cities that they went to. You have experienced the blessing of being near the kingdom.

And for you to reject the Prince of Peace is most serious. This is a solemn warning. It's a solemn warning. The consequences, the eternal consequences of rejecting the Prince of Peace. But this should also be a great encouragement to us this morning.

That Christ's kingdom is coming, it is advancing, and there is nothing, there is nothing in heaven and on earth that can thwart it, that can stop its advance. The zeal of the Lord of hosts insures it. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you for the great hope that you give to us in it, that your kingdom has come near, where you rule in righteousness and peace. And Father, we ask that we might not be discouraged, or that where we are, fearful or afraid or distraught or tempted to despair and discouragement, We ask that the truth of your word might might surround us as with a shield.

We ask Lord that that your favor might fall upon us and that you would open our eyes that we might see that those who are with us are greater than those who are against us. We ask, Lord, that you would renew our zeal to pray, that you might raise up more labors to send to the harvest. We ask that you might renew our zeal this morning for your kingdom in its righteousness. We ask, Lord, that you would arm us with your armor. Enable us to put it on and to use it.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.