One thing is immediately obvious. In the mind of our Lord, the kingdom of God and the announcement of that kingdom are not mere information. This is no infomercial: “We interrupt the normal broadcasting of your life to announce that the kingdom of God has come near. Thank you. We now resume our normal broadcasting.” That is not what is going on. This is an announcement of divine activity, of kingdom-building activity that embraces the whole of creation within its scope (think back to the prophecies of the Old Testament); and in the face of this announcement, no passive neutrality is possible. Jesus says, “Turn and believe, for God is acting! God is building a kingdom. In fact, he has already acted and the kingdom is here. So you must act. You must turn and believe.” Passive neutrality is impossible in response to this message.

Think with me further about how Jesus’ summons flows out of his announcement of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is divine activity. It is God’s active response of saving grace toward those who have rejected his rule (think back to Genesis 3:15). It is the aggressive outworking of his great master plan to restore his creation – to restore individual lives, families, communities, even structures of civilization. It is the active outworking of his purpose to overturn the curse and ruin brought upon humankind by Adam’s rebellion. This is a message saturated with astonishing grace. And to ignore this message – to have no response, or an apathetic response – is active rebellion against the purpose and working of the King. If you and I don’t turn and believe this good news, we are simply at war with God. Jesus in these glad tidings issues a clarion summons, and he will not be ignored. What does he mean by the word “repent”? He means that we are to turn.

Ben Miller – The Kingdom Has Drawn Near: Studies in the Gospel Jesus Preached

What I want to explore with you in this and the following three studies is an idea and a reality that lies at the very center of the Scriptures. Suppose someone were to say to you, “You Christians are always talking about the Bible, the ideas of God in the Bible. What is the central idea of the Bible? What are the central ideas of the Bible?” I wonder how you might answer that question. I wonder how many of us would immediately think of the answer that will be proposed in these four studies.

I want to suggest and try to persuade you as best I can by the help of the Holy Spirit that at the very center of the thought-world of God himself is an idea (and a reality!) called the kingdom of God. No less a luminary than Herman Bavinck, the great theologian of the last century, said this: “The essence of the Christian religion . . . .” Let us pause a moment. Suppose you were asked, “What is the essence of the Christian religion? What are you Christians all about? What distinguishes you?” What would you say? “The essence of the Christian religion,” says Bavinck, “consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God and re-created by the grace of the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God.”  This is a glorious definition. The sheer trinitarianism of it is glorious – that all three Persons of the Godhead are at work here. And notice that the end and goal of all their working is a kingdom, the kingdom of God.

The Bible is a book that overflows with great ideas, and that is actually a nearly irreverent statement. These are not great ideas. These are the greatest ideas, because they are the ideas of God himself. The Bible is not, over against so much popular thinking today, a book for religious “kooks” who have forgotten how to think. The Bible is the book that opens up to us the unbounded, inexhaustible thought-world of God himself. The Bible opens up to us the ideas, the plans, the purposes – what the Bible calls the very wisdom – of God. To live in this universe, to feed on these ideas of God himself, is to find the Tree of Life. The father writing to his son in Proverbs 3 says, “My son . . . blessed is the one who finds wisdom . . . . She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed” (Proverbs 3:13, 18). He who finds the wisdom of God finds the Tree of Life.

Seeing the Bible from this perspective will serve to emphasize the necessity of regular Scripture reading.  Since we are living in God’s created world, it behooves us to know what His thoughts about this world, and how to live in it, are.

Thanks Bruce!