05-03-2026 The Eternal Kingdom and the Cross
Text: Isaiah 52:7-10, 53:10-12
Today is communion Sunday and a good time to talk about Jesus’ teaching while on earth and how it relates to His death on the Cross and the establishment of the eternal Kingdom. Jesus’ message, teachings, and deeds, proclaimed and embodied the Kingdom of God, and it’s up to us to understand that the Kingdom of God comes, not despite the Cross, but through it!
Israel was saved in the original exodus and survived the harrowing effects of the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. Then came God’s promises from the prophets to bring about a new exodus where Israel’s sins would be forgiven, a new ruler, a new king, and a new covenant that would change how people come to God.
Our first text this morning is from Isaiah 52:7-10 that says: “ (7) How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good tidings, Who publishes peace; Who bring good tiding of good, Who publishes salvation; Who says unto Zion, Your God Reigns! (8) Your watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing. For they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall; bring again Zion. (9) Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. (10) The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eye of all the nations; and all the ends of Earth shall see the salvation of our God.” Later in this chapter we also read about the mysterious “Suffering Servant.”
Our second text is from Isaiah 53:10-12 that says: “ (10) Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief: when You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. (11) He shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall my righteous Servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. (12) Therefore, will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He has poured out His soul unto death and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” This is where we’re told that it was God’s will to crush and cause Jesus to suffer.
We learn Israel’s exile will end when God brings a re-ordering of power, which will bring a reversal of fortunes, vindicate of the nation from their oppressors, and return them to their land of many blessings. When we understand the kingdom message in relation to the Cross, we will us understand how Jesus’s teachings and His death are a focal point for fulfilling God’s promises to Israel and for the realizing the totality of God’s saving purposes.
Jesus began His public ministry with an announcement recorded in Mark 1:14-15: “ (14) Now after that John [the Baptist] was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, (15) and saying, The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the Gospel.” He is telling the world that the long-awaited moment had arrived when Israel’s God would become King, when divine rule would break into history and transform everything. But Jesus didn’t just talk about the Kingdom as something theoretical, He inaugurated the Kingdom and made its presence real through His actions. When He healed the sick, welcomed outcasts, dined with sinners, and cast out demons, He was showing what it looks like when God’s reign takes root and becomes reality. As Jesus himself put it in Luke 11:20 “But I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you.” Jesus’ ministry was the Kingdom-in-action — but not in the way people expected. Many anticipated military liberation, political revolution, moral reformation, religious resurgence, or dramatic cosmic intervention. Jesus offered something much more powerful.
Jesus taught with parables which are stories with a spiritual meaning. Through parables, Jesus explained that God’s Kingdom was breaking into the world like seed scattered in a field. Some would receive it and bear fruit, while others would reject it. This Kingdom will like a great homecoming feast where the outcasts are welcomed, while the self-righteous remain outside nursing their resentment. They challenge and redefine what it means to be God’s Kingdom-people and demand a response from all readers about where they fit into the Kingdom.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus outlies the Kingdom’s agenda which is: the meek will inherit the earth, peacemakers would be called God’s children, and those who hunger for justice will be satisfied. It’s where Jesus announced God’s revolutionary way of transforming the world, not through legions and armies, but through the humble, the broken-hearted, but through those committed to peace and justice. By the time the powers of this world realize what is happening, these unlikely revolutionaries will have already changed everything.
The dramatic turning point in Jesus’s mission arrived at Caesarea- Philippi, a place full of symbolism, home to a grotto dedicated to the god Pan and a temple honoring the Roman emperor. And it was here that Jesus asked His disciples a pivotal question found in Mark 8:27: Whom do men say that I am? After His disciples relayed the various rumors circulating about His identity, Jesus made the question even more direct in verse 29: But who do you say that I am? Peter, bold as ever, gave the answer that many had suspected but few had the courage to say out loud: “You are the Christ.” Jesus didn’t deny it and what happened next shocked the Disciples to their core. In verse 31 Jesus immediately began to redefine what it actually meant to be the Christ, the Messiah. He said that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again.
Jesus was weaving together several strands of scriptural expectation that had never been combined before. He was taking the role of the Messiah, the conquering king from David’s line, and fusing it with Isaiah’s suffering servant He is Daniel’s one like a son of man, Zechariah’s smitten shepherd, and the righteous sufferer of the Psalms. The path to glory had to go through the Cross. Not through military might but through suffering and death.
Jesus made this chillingly explicit in Mark 8:34-35 when He said If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it. The cross wasn’t a detour from His Kingdom message - it was central to it.
When Jesus celebrated His final meal with His disciples that became the key to understanding His death. Passover commemorated Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus transformed this ancient meal into a story of a new exodus, a new covenant, and a new King. With the simple acts of breaking the bread and sharing the cup, Jesus explains that His death would accomplish what Israel had been called to do: bring God’s salvation to the world through Israel. He was establishing a new covenant, fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy in 31:31-34 that God would forgive sins and write His law on human hearts. Jesus’ blood would inaugurate a new exodus for people. Not through the death of Egyptian firstborns, but through the death of God’s own firstborn Son.
Matthew’s account of the crucifixion in 27:37 reveals the dramatic irony surrounding Jesus’s death on the Cross. The placard above His head read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” It was intended to mock Him, but it was the truth. The Jerusalem leaders taunted Him saying: “He saved others; He cannot save Himself; if He is the King of Israel let Him come down from the Cross now, and we will believe in Him.” Yes, Jesus could have saved himself — but then He couldn’t have saved others. The Kingdom comes through the Cross because Jesus took on Himself the full weight of exile, sin, and death.
The crucifixion wasn’t Rome’s victory over another would-be messiah. It was God’s strategy for defeating evil itself. The Cross was where God’s Kingdom broke through the shell of the old creation to bring in the new. It was how God would deal with evil once and for all and launch the renewal of all things through a renewed Israel centered around the Messiah.
We tend to make the Cross only about personal salvation and the Kingdom about ethics or a future hope. But throughout the Gospels, they are inseparable. Jesus had to take on Israel’s destiny as His own. Israel was called to be the light to the nations, bringing God’s blessing to the whole world. But Israel was in exile, under judgment, unable to fulfill its calling. So, Jesus, as Israel’s true representative, took that judgment on Himself so that through His death, exile could end and the new exodus could begin. His resurrection launched a new creation.
For people today to become part of this Kingdom movement here is what we all must do. First, we must embrace the mystery at the heart of Christian faith: the way to life is through death, the path to glory goes through suffering, and the Kingdom advances not through power and coercion but through self-giving love and service.
Second, reconsider what faithful Kingdom living looks like. Jesus’ beatitudes taught in the Sermon on the Mount aren’t just about individual spirituality; they’re the Kingdom’s manifesto. We’re called to be meek, merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers. We are to hunger and thirst for justice. And we must willingly embrace persecution for righteousness’ sake. This is how God transforms the world.
Third, every time we share in the Lord’s Supper, we’re not just remembering a past event, we’re participating in the new exodus and declaring that Jesus’s death and resurrection inaugurated the Kingdom. We’re part of the new covenant community, marked by God’s forgiveness and empowered by His Spirit to live as Kingdom citizens in a world that doesn’t yet fully acknowledge the King.
The Cross and the Kingdom belong together. Jesus didn’t die instead of establishing it. He died to establish it. And His resurrection proves that death no longer has the final word. Now we live in the already-but-not-yet of God’s reign, bearing witness to the King who conquered through self-giving love, and inviting all people into His Kingdom of peace, justice, and life.
Until we meet again, may God bless you and keep you, may He shine His light on you, show you grace, and give you peace in all the days ahead.