Do you remember back in, I think, it was like ninth grade social studies where this gets taught?

Do you remember learning about immigration and push factors and

pull factors? I think the way it works is that anytime somebody moves from one

place, one culture, to another, there are usually push factors and pull factors. The push

factors are the ones that are about you know stuff not going so well where they

lived at first and they're kind of wanting to make a change to get away from

some things that are pushing them out the door and then you get the

poll factors like the desirability of another place that somebody might want to

move to and the opportunities that might be there. Well the whole message of the Bible follows a rather similar structure, that is, there are things

about the world system and the unfolding of history and people left to their own ends and the consequences of sin and death and all of these

things that is hardwired into us as individuals and also hardwired into the whole story of

history these are all things that the authors of the Bible,

the prophets, Jesus himself points to as being reasons to turn to God

because the metaphorical kingdom in which we live right now is broken, it's a dead end, it's not

going to work out.

And so that's a push factor.

But then there's also all of this stuff about the blessings of God and the kingdom of

God and the character of God and the character of God and the potential of people made in the image of God who realize that in union with God and what that means for eternity and the lightness of forgiveness of sins.

Like all of this beautiful pull factor kingdom values stuff is sitting there.

So it's not like just a biblical invitation for the reader to be like,

oh man, I don't like how World Kingdom stuff feels.

I'm going to retreat from that off into the woods somewhere and just live small.

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