PODCAST
The Kingdom Is Near
August 23rd, 2022
Matthew 10:1-10
The first message—the very first one—that Jesus gives His followers to proclaim is, “The kingdom of heaven has come near” (v. 7). Think about that for a moment.
How many preachers have you heard talk about making sure that people go to heaven when they die? How many evangelism lessons have you been taught that focused on telling people how to get to heaven? How many times have you felt the urgency to get people saved so that they can—one day—go to heaven?
And yet . . . we have the message exactly backwards from how Jesus teaches it. His first gospel proclamation for His followers is not, “Tell people how to get to heaven,” but rather, “Tell people heaven has come near to them.” In other words, the message Jesus gives us to proclaim is centered around grace, not destination. Jesus knows that if transformation is to happen in anyone’s life, we must first become convinced of the truth that heaven has come near to us in the form of Jesus, and that best of all that happened while we were yet sinners, far from God.
Author: Tara Thomas Smith
