What Is the Kingdom of God? What Jesus Said and Did

(Editorial note: This post was adapted from the sermon manuscript and transcript written and preached by Pastor Chris on Sunday, June 28, 2026 with the assistance of AI.)

What was Jesus actually trying to do when he came to Earth?

Most people have a quick answer to that question. He came to save us. He came to show us how to live. He came to die for our sins. All of those things are true, but Mark's gospel pushes you toward a more specific answer before any of those ideas get unpacked.

Jesus came to establish the kingdom of God.

That's the first thing out of his mouth in Mark's gospel. Not a parable, not a healing, not a call to follow. Just a declaration: "The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news." (Mark 1:15, NIV)

Everything that follows in Mark is Jesus making good on that announcement.

The Kingdom of God Isn't Just a Concept

One of the easiest ways to miss what Jesus was doing is to treat the kingdom of God as a spiritual metaphor. Something internal, invisible, personal. And while the kingdom does work inwardly, Mark makes clear it also works outwardly in very concrete ways.

Right after his announcement, Jesus walks into a synagogue and a man possessed by an impure spirit cries out. Jesus silences it and casts it out. That evening, the whole town gathers at the door and he heals them, casting out demon after demon, disease after disease.

This wasn't just compassion at work. It was territorial. The darkness was occupying space that belonged to the kingdom of God, and Jesus was taking it back. Every healing, every exorcism was a declaration: this ground belongs to the kingdom now.

Sickness in the ancient world wasn't just a medical problem. It was tied to sin, to death, to the broken condition of the world. When Jesus healed, he wasn't simply relieving suffering. He was removing the foothold of evil and planting the flag of the kingdom in its place.

The Kingdom Has Enemies

Establishing a kingdom means encountering opposition, and Jesus encountered it quickly.

The Pharisees started watching him almost immediately. When his disciples picked grain on the Sabbath, the Pharisees called it a violation. Jesus responded by pointing to David, who once ate consecrated temple bread out of necessity, and then said something that reframed the entire debate: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27-28, NIV)

The Pharisees weren't evil people. They were people who had built an elaborate religious structure around the law to protect it, fences on top of fences so no one could accidentally stumble into sin. But somewhere along the way, the fence became more important than the people it was meant to serve. And Jesus walked in and said so.

The very next story in Mark makes the stakes plain. Jesus heals a man with a shriveled hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath, while the Pharisees watch in silent fury. Then the Pharisees go out and begin plotting with the Herodians how to kill him. (Mark 3:6, NIV)

Chapter three. The plotting starts in chapter three.

The kingdom of God, it turns out, makes enemies of religious systems that have stopped serving people and started protecting themselves.

The Kingdom Grows Regardless

Jesus also taught about the kingdom, and what he said should be both sobering and encouraging.

He described it first as a lamp. You don't bring a lamp into a room and hide it under a bowl. You put it on a stand. The kingdom isn't meant to be kept private. It's something that exposes and illuminates and spreads. (Mark 4:21-22, NIV)

Then he told two parables about growth. In the first, a man scatters seed and the seed grows on its own, whether he pays attention or not. In the second, the kingdom is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, that grows into the largest garden plant with branches big enough for birds to perch in. (Mark 4:26-32, NIV)

The point is clear: don't judge the kingdom by what you can see right now. It has a momentum of its own. It starts small, looks insignificant, and then becomes something that can't be ignored.

The Kingdom Requires a Response

None of this is just information. Jesus wasn't announcing the kingdom so people could file it away as an interesting theological development. He was calling people into it.

"Come, follow me," he said to Simon and Andrew. "And I will send you out to fish for people." (Mark 1:17, NIV) They left their nets immediately.

To the crowd at Levi's house, eating with tax collectors and sinners, he said: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17, NIV)

And later, plainly: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it." (Mark 8:34-35, NIV)

The kingdom of God isn't something to admire from a distance. It's something to enter. And entering it costs something. It costs the life you were trying to build on your own terms.

What This Means Now

Jesus' mission hasn't changed. The kingdom is still advancing. Ground is still being taken back from the darkness, in individual lives, in families, in communities. The work that began when Jesus walked into that synagogue in Capernaum is still going.

At Salem Magley Church, that vision shapes everything. The church exists as a small embassy of the kingdom, planted in Decatur, Indiana, with the same mission Jesus announced in Mark 1: the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe.

The question Mark's gospel keeps pressing toward isn't a theological one. It's a personal one.

Will you follow him?

Watch the full sermon here.