My Kingdom Is Not Of This World...

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here. Some of you back. It's good to see a few of you back. Awesome to have a few students starting to show up. A trickle is starting. Wait till the onslaught next week. But it's great to have you here. We are still in this series. We've been doing it quite a bit of the summer called Misquoted. How the Bible is often misused and how we're trying to avoid that. We are looking today at the phrase that Jesus does use and people quote, but it's not really a misquote. It's a mis, I would say, interpretation of the quote. And that is when he says, my kingdom is not of this world. Well, what does he mean? For some, it seems like they think that means that, oh, he's just saying it's all about heaven, not about the earth. Whatever happens here doesn't really matter. Let's just get there. And he's going to take us out of this world and go to heaven. And he doesn't really care about anything down here. Just getting us there. Is that what Jesus really means? My kingdom is not of this world. Is it just to get away from this world, to escape it and survive it for now? So we're going to look at John 18 today and this interaction with Pontius Pilate. By the way, it occurs in all four Gospels. One of the few events outside of the crucifixion and resurrection and the one feeding of the 5000 that occurs in all four Gospels. That says something about the importance of this event, because, you know, his birth is not recorded in all four Gospels. You realize his transfiguration is not recorded in all four Gospels. So it's saying something that this interaction between Pontius Pilate and Jesus occurring in all four. It's even in our creed, the Apostles Creed. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It's kind of a historical marker in a sense, but much more than that. There's a lot going on with that. So let's start with reading John 18, 28 to 38. They led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas, that's the high priest, to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning, which means Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin was at night, which was against, by the way, the whole idea of Torah. You could not do a trial at night. It needed to be during day so that it wasn't conniving. So they were breaking the law by doing that. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. So Pilate went outside to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? They answered him, if this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. The Jews said to him, it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. Then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth? After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them I find no guilt in him. So Pilate thinks he's in control of this. But man, it doesn't take long before Jesus is the interrogator and Pilate's on the hot seat. And what's fascinating too, did you notice, Pilate asks the question, what is truth? And Jesus is there to bear witness to the truth, but Pilate doesn't wait for an answer. He leaves. He doesn't expect to get one. So, just like we've done in the past, we're going to do today. And that is, we're going to follow this three-part outline in this series. First is what Jesus is not saying when he mentions my kingdom is not of this world. And then what Jesus does mean by that, what he is saying, and then why that's actually much better. So, what he's not saying. He's not saying, and I kind of hinted at it, Jesus is not saying my kingdom exists somewhere else, a different plane of existence, never-never land, or whatever you want to call it. He's not saying heaven is the place that I rule in, and I don't really care about the earth. By the way, that is what certain individuals during the period called the Enlightenment in Europe, and then that impacted America and its founding. Deists wanted to believe that God...