So we are coming from an election cycle, and something that is part of any election here in America and around the world, where there is democracy and people choose one candidate or the other, is that some people are going to be encouraged and happy, while others will be discouraged and not that happy. And the reason is simple. Basically, candidates explain their campaigns in promising good news that will come after they become elected. And what happen is that when your candidate don't get chosen, you will think that those things that were promised to you will not be delivered. And sometimes people can even get scared and frustrated and concerned about the candidate that became either president or governor or whatever. But what is important for us as Christians is to remember that even though we might be affected as others by an election cycle, Christ is the king. He continues to be the king here on this earth, in the universe, and his kingdom is an eternal kingdom. He is above all. Therefore, we have this beautiful promise that we need to remember during this season. Now, why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because During this month, here in the afternoon service, we're going to be focusing on the theme of the Kingdom of God. This is going to be the theme for this month. We're going to be looking at this theme through the Book of Mark. We're going to have a mini-series. We're going to have the two parks, Job Park and Job Park, come into preach as well. And I will be continuing also focusing on this theme. And we are starting today from Mark chapter one, where we will see the introduction to the kingdom of God. Christ introducing the kingdom of God on earth. And the title for today's sermon is Biding the Strongman. So you can go into your Bibles or your bulletins, and we're gonna be reading Mark chapter one, verses one through 15. Mark chapter 1 verses 1 through 15. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him, were baptized, were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and white honey. And he preached, saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I. The strap of his sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being turned open and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you with the knowledge and understanding that we are weak to understand your word and that only the Spirit can reveal this to our hearts. So we pray, Lord, that you prepare our minds and our hearts as we consider and ponder these verses. Help us, Lord, to grow in our faith and our understanding of your presence here on earth with your kingdom. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. So Mark is a quick book in the gospels, and he starts his gospel by introducing the whole thing of his gospel, or the book. He says, in the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. So Mark book is focused in displaying, in teaching, and explaining the message of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if I go around and ask each one of you what is the gospel for you, I'm sure that you guys will have good answers for this question. You understand what is the gospel because you are a Christian, because you trusted in that message, in that good news, the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you might talk about the coming of Jesus, salvation, Jesus paying on the cross for your sins, reconciliation, and eternal life. But all these things are together packed in one message that Mark is putting for us to see in this moment, but also is the message of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the gospel about? The gospel is about the coming of the kingdom of God to the world. This is the message of the gospel, the coming of the kingdom of God into the world. And this, as we say, the gospel, the evangelium, the good news, were no news. This was a message that was proclaimed before in the Old Testament by the prophets. It was a message that was sent to the nations, particularly to the nation of Israel, proclaimed about the coming of the kingdom of God into the world. So I'd like to read a few verses or passages from the Old Testament that are very familiar to you regarding the announcement of the coming of the kingdom of God. Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14 says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Emmanuel is God with us. So it's the coming of God to dwell among his people as their king. We have also Isaiah chapter nine verses six and seven. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David, over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness, from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this. Micah chapter 5 verses 2 and verses 4 says this. But you, O Bethlehem, Epaphrathah, you are too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose kingdom forth is from old, from ancient days. Verse 4. And he shall stand the scepter, his flock, in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And the last one that I have is Zechariah chapter nine, verse nine. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shat alau, the daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation. Righteousness and having salvation is he. Humble and among a donkey. Mounted on a donkey. On a cloth. The folk of a donkey. So we see that the Old Testament or in the Old Testament we have the promise of the coming of the kingdom of God because that is what God has promised to Israel and to the world. the coming of his kingdom into the world. And what we see here in the first chapter of Mark is that this kingdom has come. And what Mark introduces to us first is this prophet that will be the last prophet of the Old Testament. His name is John. And he had a specific mission. He came to be the herald. He came to announce the coming of the king. We see that in verses two and three. And it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. These are quotations from Malachi chapter 3 verse 1 and Isaiah 43. All these were announcements of how the kingdom will come into the world. There will be a one last prophet of the Old Testament that will come to prepare the way for the Lord, the king. He will come to remind his people of the promise that God has given to Israel in the Old Testament. And then he's coming with a clear message. Now what kind of king was Israel was expecting? They were expecting a king, but they were expecting a king that would defeat those who were oppressing them at that moment. In this case was the Roman Empire. They were expecting a king who would overthrow the empire that was oppressing them, but by the way the messenger of the king is announcing kingdom and the way the kingdom is coming, you could see that that was not the way or that was not exactly how the kingdom would come to them. See what John was preaching. John says, in verse 4 he says, John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John didn't come telling the people of Israel, get ready, We're gonna fight against the Roman Empire and God will be with you to protect you and to establish his kingdom. John was speaking to the hearts of those who were prepared for the coming of the king. Because the kingdom that was coming was a spiritual kingdom that will actually deal with not the physical problem or the physical oppression that they were facing, but the spiritual oppression that they were facing. The oppression of sin and Satan. And that you can see from the beginning, even the messenger that came to bring the message of the coming kingdom was declaring to them, actually you need to prepare your hearts to receive the king. Now, Mark does something that you see throughout the book, is that he moves from one story to another. He says, then you go immediately to the story of Jesus' baptism. And everybody saw a man, Jesus Christ, coming whom we read this afternoon from the book of John, that he declares that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But what everybody could see was just a man being baptized. But to John, God gave a revelation of what was happening behind the scenes. To John, he removed that curtain that showed him that the king was being anointed and crowned. Look what he says. in verse 10, and when he came out of the water immediately, he saw, John saw, the heavens being turned open and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came down from heaven, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. Therefore John was seeing something that those around him were not seeing that. Christ the King was anointed for his kingdom. Then he moved immediately, as you said, as Mark says, to Jesus' temptation. But Jesus, in his temptation, was not a victim of Satan. You can see that the one who takes Jesus to the desert is not Satan, but the Spirit of God. He says, the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And in the wilderness, Jesus himself faced his first battle as the king of Israel, as the king coming to establish his kingdom, but to overthrow the kingdom that was existing there. Again, I remind you, they were expecting a king that would overthrow Rome, the Roman Empire, but Jesus was coming. overthrow the kingdom that was actually the source of any evil power in the world. And then from there we get to the verses that we are actually looking at today, verses 14 and verse 15. This is the inauguration of Christ's kingdom. But what you see is that Mark does something that he doesn't often do throughout the book, that he gives you some context of the coming of Christ to take in his role of the king. He says, and after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee. It was necessary that the messenger will decrease so the king will increase. And think about this. Him, John, as a messenger will think, I am representing the king, but where do I end? I end in prison. That doesn't look actually like victory is coming. And you will see later, as we will see in some verses later, how John even question and wonder why was he in prison if the king has come. And when Jesus comes, he doesn't come telling people, well, let's get ready for war. He came doing something which is setting for us the example of how the kingdom of God is established. He came, says, proclaiming the gospel of God. My dad and my uncle came to the Lord through Campus Crusade. And when they heard the gospel, they were so passionate about sharing it with many others. Then they went to be with one of the pastors there in Barranquilla that encouraged them to go to seminary. And when they went to seminary, they thought that they would go there to be ready to get ready to participate in the expansion of God's work, kingdom work, the church. But it happened that the seminary that they ended was a liberal seminary. And my dad said that after his years in seminary, by the end of his time, the thing that he learned is that the church was not necessary on earth. And that in fact, that the work of the kingdom of God was to simply help the poor and do social justice. So the proclamation of the word was not really important according to what he have learned. It took for my dad years to recover from that teaching. Jesus is setting an example for us that is not to be changed or altered throughout the history of the church. He came proclaiming, proclaiming the gospel of God. He came proclaiming the good news of God. He came proclaiming the kingdom of God. That is the mission of the church. Yes, we love our neighbors and we do many things as we bring the gospel out, but the mission of the church is to get the gospel out, and we do that through the proclamation of God's word. What was Jesus proclaiming, you see? He says, the gospel of God, and John and Mark starts His book saying this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because the gospel of God is the same gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the good news of the kingdom of God. And what is the content of the gospel? What is the message of the gospel? What are the good news? Jesus says, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. The word that we have here for time is not the common word that you will find throughout the New Testament for time, which is chromos or chronos, but it's the word kairos. which implies a critical time. So this is not just a simple time, but it's the critical time. It's the time that breaks the history of humanity into two. This is why we talk about BC, AD, is because the coming of Jesus Christ is the critical time in the history of humanity until the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus says the time is fulfilled is the critical time is fulfilled because this is the time that was promised in the Old Testament. The entire Old Testament was pointing to this very moment. All the things that we find in the Old Testament are shadows that are pointing to the coming of the Messiah. And when Jesus Christ is announcing his kingdom, he's announcing that all what was back in the Old Testament was pointing to this Kairos, this very critical time. Now he says the kingdom of God is at hand. First of all, when we think about the kingdom, we tend to think that the kingdom refers to a territory. But the word basilea really means the rule or sovereignty or reign of God has come. When Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is coming, he's referring to himself, who is the one who is bringing God's kingdom. It will make sense to say the territory because the territory refers to everything that exists. from in the world, and then you would be saying that everything is coming. But what Jesus is saying is that I am coming, the kingdom is coming, the king is coming. Now, Jesus says the kingdom of God is at hand, which means that the kingdom of God is right here, right now. The thing is that those who were around Jesus would not necessarily see a king. would not even understand how he was bringing God's kingdom into the world. They saw a man who was proclaiming, who was preaching the good news, but how was Jesus establishing his kingdom? You see examples. For example, the Pharisees asked Jesus, when did The kingdom comes, this is from Luke chapter 17. When the kingdom will come, and he answered to them, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. Nor will they say, look, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. You also have even John Baptist, who said, behold the line of God who takes away the sin of the world, who saw this beautiful picture of the dove descending from heaven and the voice from heaven. After he's arrested, and you find this in Matthew 11, verses one through three, saying, now when John heard in prison about the deeds of Christ, he sent word to his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another? John was in prison, wondering, if the kingdom of God has come, why am I here if I was the herald? When is Jesus going to set me free from this prison? On the other hand, even by the end of Jesus' ministry, after the disciples have seen the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of, or they were about to see the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, you're seeing at one sits that they are asking this question, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Everybody around was wondering, or was having a hard time to understand the meaning that the kingdom of God has come. How was the kingdom of God coming? Now I find in Mark 3, verses 22 to 27, in a conversation that Jesus has with the Pharisees, a very important clue for us to understand the meaning of the kingdom of God is right now, right here. The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, he is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons, he casts out demons. They were wondering how is it possible that he was casting out demons, and they could not deny the power of Jesus Christ. But their conclusion was that he must be possessed by Beelzebul, but that he will be casting out demons in the name of Satan. Jesus answered with parables today, and he says, Satan cannot cast out Satan, and he uses two examples. He says, if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. The second one, a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. He's using logic to say it doesn't make sense for you to say that I'm casting out demons in the name of Satan. But in verse seven, he actually removed the curtain for them, which they couldn't understand at that moment, to show them how he was establishing his kingdom. He says, but no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed, he may plunder his house. Jesus was revealing to them what he was actually doing. Who is the strong man? The strong man is Satan. And who is the one who is coming into the strong man's house? It's our Lord Jesus Christ. Who are the goods that he will plunder? It's the people, the souls that Satan has kept captive for centuries. But what is that thing that he have to do before he plunder the goods? He have to bind the strong man. Bind the strong man. This is an important word in this verse because this connects us quickly with what we find in Revelation. Chapter 20 verses one through three. And here in Revelation we see a more expanded version of what was happening. in the spiritual realm while Jesus was establishing his kingdom on earth. He says, then I saw, this is John in Revelation chapter 20 verses one through three. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the buttonless pit and a great shame. And he sees the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan and says, unbound him for a thousand years. This was happening at the very moment when Jesus Christ was establishing his kingdom on earth. He was pounding Satan, says, for a thousand years. And says, and threw him into the pit, and shut it, and sealed it over it, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer. That very thing that John describes here was what happened when Jesus was establishing his kingdom on earth. But then you might wonder, how is it possible that Jesus actually bound Satan and we can still see the mystery of lawlessness as we saw in Thessalonians at work in the world? Well, a way for you to understand this is just to look at the history of the church. Jesus Christ came, only one group of people were in communion with God, the nation of Israel. So if you were to see the whole world remain in darkness and there was only one place, and maybe some people that were spread out through the nations, Israel was in communion with God. And that light wasn't actually very bright, it was dim, because they were not in close relationship with God. But what happened after Jesus Christ died, after Jesus Christ resurrected and went up to heaven, and sent his apostles, you just look at 13 through the end of the chapter, of the book, how many churches were planted in all the nations of the world. The fact that we are here right now together is a demonstration that Satan will not deceive the nations or have not deceived the nations any longer because the gospel has gone out. It talks about for a thousand years, and that thousand years is the period of time between Jesus' first coming and Jesus' second coming. But John tells us also that after that, he must be released for a little while. And we studied that together when we were in 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 1 through 12. that refers to that moment when the men of lawlessness and sin and the mystery of lawlessness will be released. Why? Because the restrainer will be released and for a short time he will be at work in the world until Jesus Christ with the breath of his mouth will destroy him. The kingdom of God is right now right here, his presence because Christ established his kingdom by defeating the power of the devil when he came to earth. You can say also that the kingdom of God is not yet here in the sense that there is still more to come, that we are looking forward to the final destruction of the power of evil, where we will be with Christ forever, and sin will be no more, and death, our last enemy, will be no more. Now after Jesus announces the coming of his kingdom, his kingdom is at hand, the kingdom of God is at hand, he says the word of exhortation. What is the response? The response is repent and believe in the gospel. Repent is to turn away from, and belief in the gospel is to turn away to. Repent is to change your heart and your mind from the direction that was coming, which is worshiping idols, and belief in the gospel is to realize, is to believe the fact that God is creator of this world, and that we are his creatures, and that we are sinners, and therefore we need to be restored by the power of Christ, because there is nothing in our power that can restore this relationship with God. The exhortation is an exhortation for the world. The kingdom of God has come, and when we go out to the world, we are actually challenging the world with these words, repent and believe in the gospel. But the same thing is a challenge for us in our daily life because the Christian life is a life of repentance and it's a life of returning to believe in the gospel daily. Now, but what is the relevance, brothers and sisters, that the kingdom of God is at hand, that the kingdom of God is right now, right here? I was telling you at the beginning that we have come out from an election cycle And there is this temptation for Christians as well to put our eyes on earthly kingdoms. But we have to remember that Christ is the king right now, right here, and he is above all powers, above all kings. Therefore, the Christian is someone who is not to be distressed by the different things that we see around the world, but a Christian is someone who is to trust and rest in King Jesus. We are called to remember that Christ is the king of our lives, that Christ is the king of this world today and forever. Let us pray. Dear God, we thank you that you have opened our eyes to see the truth of the gospel, the good news that your kingdom has come to this world. That even though the world might not see a triumphant church, a triumphant body, we know, Lord, that in Christ, you are the king and we are your people. Help us, Lord, to rely on this truth from your word. Help us, Lord, to trust in you. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.