THE
KINGDOM OF CHRIST

Dr. W.
A. Criswell

John 18:36

2-5-89
10:50 a.m.

Once again, we welcome
the throngs of you who share this hour on radio and on television.  This
is the First Baptist Church in Dallas, and I am the pastor delivering the
message entitled The Kingdom of Our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.

In our preaching through the
Gospel of John, the fourth gospel, we have come to the last and climactic and
concluding days of His life in the flesh.  And out of that scene and
trial, we read in John chapter 18, verses 33 to 37:

Then Pilate entered into
the judgment hall, called Jesus, and said unto Him, Art Thou the King of the
Jews?

Jesus answered him,
Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me?

Pilate answered, Am I a
Jew?  Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me: what
hast Thou done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom
is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My
servants fight, that I should not be delivered: but now is My kingdom not from
hence.

Pilate therefore said
unto Him, Art Thou a king?  Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king –

the strongest affirmation in the Greek
language.

To repeat it, “Thou
sayest I am a king.  To this end was I born, and for this cause came I
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.  Every one that
is of the truth heareth My voice” [John 18:37].

In these hours of the
trial and finally the crucifixion of our Savior, there was an incredible and
unbelievable series and successions of paradoxes and anomalies.  He who
came to set the prisoner free is now arrested and arraigned and
imprisoned.  He who came to lead us into life is now bound over and
delivered into death.  He who was the center of angelic worship through
all of the ages before, the eternity past, is now that lone and forsaken figure
standing in the judgment hall.  And He of whom the prophet Isaiah said, “His
name will be called Wonderful, Counselor” [Isaiah
9:6], is now standing before a vapid and vacillating judge.

The Jewish people who
were crying for His blood refused to enter the Gentile judgment hall lest they
be defiled.  And yet He stands there in their presence, the Holy One of
the God of Israel.  And the most amazing anomaly and paradox of all; He
says, “I am a king.”  Pilate listened incredulously and looked in
amazement.  “You, this peasant from an undistinguished village in Galilee,
You are a king?”  Betrayed by one of His own disciples, delivered up to
death by His own countrymen; instead of being exalted and honored, He’s denied
and derided.

Had He been of the line
of the Pharaohs, had He been of the family of Nimrod, had He been of the race
of the Caesars, Pilate might have looked upon Him at least in interest if not
in honor.  But this Man despised and spit upon, derided and denied, and
soon to be crucified and killed, He is a king?  And not only did He speak
that He was of royalty, and I might say that intrinsically imperial He was, and
however He might be spit upon and denied, the centuries cannot deny the
nobility of the truth on which He stood and on which He stands.  A king, and He
says, “I am the Lord of a kingdom.”  He speaks of “My kingdom” – one whose
reality lies not in things seen, but in things unseen. And Pilate curled his
lips in contemptuous disdain, “A kingdom,You?” The only kingdom to which Pilate
had ever been introduced was the iron kingdom of the imperial Caesars of Rome,
a kingdom of armies and of tax gatherers and of marching men, a kingdom that
exacted obedience and tribute from its enslaved and unwilling subjects.
And this Man is King of a kingdom!  His power to rule, where was it?
Standing there crowned with thorns, with a castoff dirty purple robe over His
shoulders and with a reed for a scepter, where was His power to rule?

And in the exchange of
words in the next chapter, Pilate says to Him as a representative of the Roman
government, “I have power to crucify Thee, or to release Thee” [John 19:10].  And in keeping with that
imperial ableness and might and glory, he delivered that peasant to crucifixion
and to death.  But I ask you, dear people, who was triumphant, and who was
victorious, and who was in ascendancy?  Upon the brow of that humble
Galilean is not today a crown of thorns but a diadem filled with all the
everlasting stars of God’s heaven above us.  And His sovereignty of Spirit
has grasped and seized the hearts, and minds, and admiration, and worship of
the noblest men and women of the ages.  And His kingdom has arisen in
increasing glory and power above all the dust heaps of all of the dominions and
kingdoms of this enduring world.

There is none like Him
and the domain over which He rules.  And as for Pilate himself, the candle
of rulership that he held in his hand has been extinguished into the darkness
for two thousand years.  And the domain in the empire he represented has
been lost, its grandeur forgotten.  And as for Pilate himself, the only
remembrance of it lies in this encounter he had with the Lord Jesus.  And
he lies in an utterly forgotten grave.

The kingdom of our Lord,
bringing with it imperishable riches to those who call upon His name, is in
ascendancy over all of the dominions and nations and empires of the
world.  There’s none like Him, and there’s none like the kingdom over
which He rules. He speaks of His kingdom as not of this world.  “My
kingdom is not from hence. It’s not of this.  It’s not of the earth.
It’s not of time.  My kingdom is in another realm, in another glory, in
another definition, in another age, in another life.  My kingdom is not
from hence, not in the earth.”  He could have built His Empire down here
in this earth.  He said to Pontius Pilate, “If My kingdom were of this
world, then would my servants fight” [John 18:36].
We’d declare war.  We’d conquer the earth.

I want to show you, if I
can, that was not empty speech and vain language.  Do you remember the
verse that closes the story of His feeding the five thousand?  There were five
thousand men fed.  How many other thousands there, women and children, we’re
not told.  There were five thousand men fed with a little handful of food,
with a little boy’s lunch.  And when they saw that miracle, do you
remember the next verse?  “And they sought by force to make Him a king” [John 6:15].

The reason is
obvious.  Here is a man that can feed an army in a handful of food.
And as you’ve heard all your life, an army marches on its stomach.  If the
army starves, the battle is lost.  Here is a man that can feed an army in
a handful of food, and not only that, but here is a man who can raise the
dead.  If a soldier is slain, He can speak him back to life.  How
would you face an invincible foe like that?  He could have been the head
of a great, vanquishing, triumphant army and conquered the world.
Instead, He said to Simon Peter, “Put up your sword.”  Do you remember
again when He was arrested and arraigned, and Peter drew that sword, the Lord
said, “Simon, Simon, if I will, I could ask My Father for twelve legions of
angels” [Matthew 26:52-53].  A legion is six
thousand soldiers.  Twelve legions would be seventy-two thousand
angels.

And do you remember in
the [thirty-seventh] chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the days of Hezekiah when
the Judean king was shut up in Jerusalem and the Assyrian army held him in a
vise?  That night one angel – one – passed over the Assyrian host, and the
next morning they counted one hundred eighty-five thousand dead corpses [Isaiah 37:36].  And the Lord says, “If I
will, I could ask My Father for seventy-two thousand angels.”  He
repudiated a conquest of this present darkened world.

Would you look
again?  Had He built His kingdom in this world, if His kingdom were of
this and now; one, He would have shared it with Satan, and with darkness, and
with sin, and with death.  What a bargain that would have been for Satan
to be coequal with the Prince of glory!  And what would God have been in
His definition and character thus to compromise the world with Satan?  The
Lord repudiated it.

In the third temptation
when Satan brought before the Lord Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and
their glory, and Satan said, “This, all of this will I give You if You will bow
down and worship me,” and our Lord said, “Get thee behind Me Satan:  [for it is
written,] thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” [Matthew 4:8-10].  Had our Lord acquiesced
in building His kingdom in this earth, its foundation would have been by force,
by a marching army.

There was a Pax Romana,
world peace, because the army of Rome had conquered civilization itself.
There could have been a Pax Christiana, the force of the marching armies
of Christ, the sword of God conquering and vanquishing the entire population
and nation and civilization of this world.  The Lord repudiated it, “Simon
Peter, put back that sword in its sheath.”  The only empire and kingdom
that those men could think of, could recognize, was that represented by the
iron will of Rome.

But our Lord, looking
upon that vision of Daniel, our Lord repudiated it all.  That head of gold
represented the kingdom of Babylon, gone.  Those shoulders and arms
represented the kingdom of the Medo-Persians, gone.  The mid-section and
thighs represented the kingdom of the Greeks, gone, perished in the dust heap
of the earth.  And those iron legs represented the kingdom of Rome,
represented by Pilate, and its seven hundred years of history was already
beginning to disintegrate and to die.

Jesus will never be known
as the king of the glitter of pomp, or of the conquesting conversion by the
sword, or by the fascinating, sensuous display of the ephemeralities of this
time and of this earth.  His kingdom is in another category, and its glory
is not of this age.  The glory of the kingdoms of this world can be found
in marble palaces and colonnaded halls and jewel diadems.  And the Lord
repudiated it all.

My sweet people, there is
more meaning in the humble manger of Christ in a cattle stall and in the bare,
rugged cross on Mount Calvary than in all the sweep of all the palaces and
colonnaded alabaster columns of this world.  And the entrance into the
kingdom is not by might, and not by power, and not by riches, and not by
force.  When they asked, “Who’s the greatest?”  He took a little child and
set the youngster in the midst and said, “The more like that little child you
are, the greater you are.”  And when the disciples quarreled about who
would be next in the kingdom after Jesus, our Lord disrobed and girded Himself
with a towel and began to wash their feet.  This is the kingdom of our
Lord.

May I describe it in the
few minutes that remain?  The kingdom of Jesus; first:  He alone is
Lord.  It is not shared with Satan, or with darkness, or with death, or
with sin.  He alone is King, King Jesus.  In the fifty-ninth and in
the sixty-third chapters of Isaiah, twice repeated, “God looked for someone to
deliver, and found none.”  Then He said, “My arm shall bring deliverance
and salvation” [Isaiah 63:5].  That
arm of deliverance and salvation is Jesus our Lord, He alone and none
other.

All hail the power of
Jesus’ name!

Let angels prostrate
fall.

Bring forth the royal
diadem

And crown Him Lord of
all.

It’ll be King Jesus, and He alone.

Again, the kingdom of our
Lord is one of truth.  “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I
into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth” [John 18:37], truth incarnate; truth in flesh and in blood;
truth not in a book, in a creed, in a philosophy, in a discourse, but truth
living and viable, the truth of God.  John 14:6, He says, “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life.”  And the truth of God in Christ Jesus is
ever here before us.  He’s transparent from head to foot.  His whole
life was in public.  And even in solitude, the disciples were there to
observe and to describe.

Truth; you can handle
it.  You can touch it.  You can feel it.  You can see it.
You can hear it, truth of God that lived and walked in our midst, truth
incarnate.  How desperately we need somebody who is like us, who can
understand and sympathize with our foibles, and our weaknesses, and our trials,
and our temptations, and our sins.

Had it been an angel come
down, what kind of a kingdom over which could he rule?  He’d know nothing
of us.  But someone in our nature made like unto us!  There are no
more beautiful passages in all God’s Word than those glorious Scriptures in the
Book of Hebrews,

It behooved Him to be
made like unto His brethren.

Tried in all points as
we are, though He without sin.

Able to sympathize with
those who suffer and hurt.

Wherefore, come boldly unto
the throne of grace, that we

might find grace to help
in time of need.

[Hebrews 2:17, Hebrews 4:15-16]

There is no trial, there
is no hurt, there is no suffering, there is no despair, there are no tears and
no sorrows that He has not experienced.  He knows all about us – that kind
of a Lord.  We did not and do not need another echo of a Seneca, or of a
Marcus Aurelius, or even of a Socrates and a Plato and an Aristotle.  We
need a Savior, one who can walk with us, who loves us, who understands us, who
sympathizes with us, who can forgive our sins, who can take us to Himself in
heaven.  And that somebody is King Jesus, the Lord Jesus; none like Him in
heaven or in earth.

The kingdom of our
Savior, it is open to everybody, to everyone, anybody, anyone, rich or poor,
learned or unlearned.  That kingdom, the parameters and the perimeters are
infinite.  There are no restrictive acts.  There are no immigration
quotas.  There are no color boundaries.  Anybody!  The truer and the
humbler you are, the more you will feel at home with the Lord Jesus.  You
don’t need a Diogenes’ lantern to find those who are brought into His presence
and into His kingdom.  It’s a wonder and a marvel!  The kingdom of
Jesus, open to everybody.

I have preached in the
Church of England.  That is the largest attended in the British Isles, in
the city of London; there in that elegant pulpit, pomp and ceremony, and the elite
of the British Empire seated there in the ritual.  And I have preached in
a leper colony in Nigeria, West Africa, and the whole church made out of mud; the
church house made out of mud; the pews made out of mud; the pulpit made out of
mud; the lectern made out of mud; the whole church made out of mud:  and in the
pulpit, getting ready to preach, listening to those lepers sing, “The great
Physician now is near; the sympathizing Jesus.”  And dear people, whether
it was in August, in the elegant pulpit in the city of London or that mud
church in Nigeria, West Africa, the message was the same.  The Savior was
the same.  The Lord Jesus was the same.  Anyone is welcome.
You, I, the greatest, the humblest, the richest, the poorest, the highest, the
lowest, welcome.  This is the kingdom of our Savior.  It is a kingdom
whose glory will fill the earth at His coming.

O Lord Jesus, You not
only died for me, bled for me, ascended for me, intercede for me, but, Lord,
someday You’re coming for me.  Not the least of His saints will He leave
in the dust of the earth hidden in the graves of this world.

Jesus is coming for
me.  And in that glorious day of triumph, we shall reign with Him as kings
and priests upon this earth: the kingdom of our Lord Jesus.  And last:  it
is a kingdom that shall abide forever.  Death is conquered, and sin is
vanquished.  No more will we bow by the open graves and weep our hearts
away.  No longer will time waste our lives away and we sink under the
weight of the judgment of death.  In this last week, within a few days, I
had four funerals, one after another.  Weep and cry and bid goodbye.
Death shall be no longer.  “Neither sorrow, nor crying, nor shall there be
any more pain: for these things are all passed away” [Revelation 21:4].  This is the everlasting kingdom of our
Lord.  Strangers and pilgrims are we here.  Our home, everlasting
home, is in the city of God that will soon be coming down.

O blessed Savior,
wonderful Lord, the King of my heart, and of my house, and of my home, and of
my life, and of this dear church, and of the preaching of the gospel of hope
revealed to us in Holy Scripture, and in the Spirit of Christ who moves in our
midst: blessed Jesus!

And now to you who have
listened on television, could I make a humble appeal?  If you will pray
this simple prayer, God will open for you the doors of His kingdom, the gates
of heaven, everlasting righteousness and life, joy and happiness unspeakable.  A
simple prayer, “Lord, You know, as I know, that I am a sinner, and I face the
judgment of death.  Death awaits me because I am a sinner.  I confess
that Lord.  You know it, and I face the judgment of death.”  Number
two: “Lord, You died in my place.  You paid the penalty for my sin that I
might live.  And, Lord Jesus, I love You for it.  And I invite You
into my heart, and into my house, and into my home, and into my life.”  And
one other; on this screen you will find a telephone number.  Call us and
tell us you have opened your heart to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

God says in His Holy
Word, Romans 10:9 and 10, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus is Lord,
and believe in thine heart that He lives,” that He can save and deliver, “thou
shalt be saved.  For with the heart one believeth unto salvation, unto a God-kind
of righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto that deliverance.”
Call us.  Tell us you have received the Lord in your heart, and it will be
a new day and a new life and a new blessing.  It is in His hands and
ableness as the King of glory to bring a gift to you.

And to these who are in our
sanctuary this holy hour, as we sing our hymn of appeal, on the first note of
the first stanza, “Pastor, this is God’s day for me, and I’m coming down that
aisle, down that stairway.”  A family you, to put your life with us in our dear
church, a couple you, to dedicate your house and home to the Lord, or just one
somebody you, “Pastor, I received the Lord Jesus in my heart for all that He
promised to be, and here I stand.”  God bless you in the way as you come while
we stand and while we sing.