Happy Friday, everyone.

Thanks for listening to the podcast.

Well, for many of you, you know, the Kingdom is a big theme for Jesus.

In the ESV translation, the Kingdom language is mentioned 126 times in the Gospels.

But then Kingdom is mentioned only 34 times in the rest of the New Testament, which prompts

Christopher from the UK to write in.

Hi, Pastor John, thank you very much for your excellent APJ podcast.

I'm amazed you can put so much effort into such complex and difficult questions for complete

strangers like me.

My question for you is this.

The Gospel of Matthew alone is full of references to the coming Kingdom,

55 of them in Matthew alone.

But from Acts and into the epistles, there seems to be very little mention of the Kingdom.

So what is the Kingdom of God and is it the Church or is it something larger than the Church?

So I hear two crucial questions.

One is what is the Kingdom of God and the other is why does it get so much prominent explicit focus

in the teachings of Jesus but far less prominent explicit focus in the letters of the New Testament?

So let me say a word about each of those questions.

I think the most important thing I could say about the Kingdom of God that would help people make

sense out of all the uses is that the basic meaning of the word Kingdom in the Bible is God's

reign, R-E-I-G-N, not realm or people.

The Kingdom creates a realm.

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