Let me ask you now to look with me for a few moments. You are perfectly well aware of the fact that the Jews cherished a belief in the coming of a Messiah and the establishment of God's kingdom here on earth and among men. You are not so well aware, perhaps, unless you have made a study of it, that a belief like this has not been confined to the Jews. In many other nations a similar expectation has been cherished. We find it, for example, among some of the tribes of our North American Indians. It is world-wide, in other words, in its range. It is no peculiarity of the Jews. But let us confine ourselves a moment to their particular hope. It is a perfectly natural belief. It required no revelation in order for it to grow up. They believed that the God of the world, of the universe, was their God; that they were his chosen people. Do you not see what a necessary corollary would be a belief in their ultimate prosperity and triumph? God would certainly bless and give the kingdom to that people which he had specially selected for his own. And so, as the coming of the kingdom was postponed, they believed that it was because they had not complied with the divine conditions, they had not kept the law or they had not been good, they had not obeyed him. Somehow, they had done wrong; and that was the reason the kingdom so long delayed. Remember another thing. We have come, in this modern time, to place the kingdom away off in another world after the close of this life. The Jews had no such belief about it. They expected it to come right here on this poor little planet of ours; and they expected that a kingdom was to be set up which was not only to place them at the head of humanity, but through them was to bless all mankind. Different thinkers among them held different views, but this in substance was the belief; and they were constantly looking for signs of this imminent revolution which was to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, that is, his Anointed One. John the Baptist preached that this kingdom was coming. But he was imprisoned and beheaded, having come into conflict with the civil authority. Jesus, then, having come from Nazareth, where he had studied and thought and brooded over the divine will, takes up this broken work of John, and begins a proclamation of the gospel; and the one thing which constituted that gospel was: The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe; accept this statement. And note that "repent" on the lips of Jesus did not mean what we have been accustomed to associate with it. The New Testament word translated "repent" means change your purpose, change your method of life. You have not been in accord with the truth, you have not been obedient to God; turn about, come into accord with the divine law, become obedient to the divine message.