Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Today we will begin a series on the Kingdom of God. When I talk about the kingdom, I don’t want you to miss-understand and think I’m talking about heaven. The Kingdom that the Bible talks about should affect every area of your life. The concept of kingdom has many personal implications and applications for each of us who call Jesus our King. Before I begin to talk about the kingdom, you need to recognize who is on the throne of your life. Who is making the decisions in your life day to day? Is it you or Jesus? Are you surrendered to Jesus as your king or are you still calling the shots? Have you surrendered just part of your life or are you completely surrendered to Him? Jesus is not a part time King. He’s not just King when you want Him to be. He does not step down when you don’t want him there and then return when you need something from Him. You have to come to grips with the fact that Jesus is the King. You didn’t put Him on the throne and you can’t take Him off. I say this because those of us who have been in church for a while easily accept the idea that Jesus is the King as a concept, but as a practical application the idea of a king ruling over us is a foreign concept. We say that Jesus is our King, but we remain seated on the throne of our life. We do what we want, when we want and how we want. We “surrender” the parts of our life that we don’t want in trade for eternal life in heaven, but we hang onto the parts that we want to keep. The ones our flesh does not want to give up. Our pride, our arrogance, our mouth, our attitude, our identity that we have
from a past career and our money. Have you surrendered those things to King Jesus or is your flesh still firmly in control of those? You see, there is a cost you have to consider if you really want to fully surrender your life to king Jesus. The key to being a disciple of Jesus, is understanding the kingdom concept. The Kingdom? Isn’t the Bible basically about Jesus coming to die for my sins so I can go to heaven? No, it’s not. Matthew 4:17 “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He summed it all up when He told us what to do, repent. And He told us why we should do it, the kingdom has arrived. Look at His words. Jesus didn’t say: “Apologize, so you can go to heaven.” But isn’t that what we hear in church most of the time? Jesus did not come to earth for you to get a ticket to heaven. If you believe the only reason Jesus came to earth, died and then rose again was for your ticket to Heaven, it becomes very easy to become self centered, and you start thinking everything else that Jesus taught is optional. That kind of thinking allows you to stay on the throne of your life. As long as you got the main thing taken care of, the rest of life is just about trying to get through till it’s over. You basically treat Jesus as a broker who set up your retirement plan. The reality is, that Heaven is a side benefit of us being restored to a right relationship with God. Is it going to be more awesome than we can imagine? Yes. Is it the reason we were created and why Jesus came to earth? No.
I have been going to church every time the doors were open since I was a small child, but the power of God was not at work in my life until I started seeking the kingdom of God. Once I did, everything changed. The Word of God came to life in a way I can’t explain. I’ve never been a reader. As a matter of fact, the best way for me to fall asleep was to open a book...especially the Bible. But once I began to understand the principles of God’s kingdom, I could not get enough of His Word. I couldn’t stop reading. It was like a light was turned on and I was following it wherever it took me. Today as we begin our study of the Kingdom of God, I’ll be laying a lot of groundwork that will cover the initial concepts of kingdom life. These are the themes that you will see over and over during our study, so we need to make sure we have a firm grasp on them as we begin. The elements that are in a kingdom are as follows: The King, who owns everything A Domain, an area the King rules Citizens, with Rights and Responsibilities
A Governor, who leads the colony The Laws, a constitution by which the kingdom operates A Tax System, by which the citizens are provided for We will be covering each of these topics as we work through the concept of kingdom life over the next weeks. There are about 120 references in the bible to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. But what do we know about the Kingdom? Jesus taught more about The Kingdom than any other topic. If it was that important to Him, it should be that important to us.
But for all those years I spent in church, I don’t remember one sermon on what Jesus was talking about when He talked about the Kingdom of God or or of heaven. I believe that’s because we all just assumed He was talking about heaven and how things would be when we get there. But if you take a while and study the scripture it becomes very clear that He was not just talking about going to heaven. There is much more to kingdom life than a retirement plan in heaven. The two phrases used in scripture, “kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven” are talking about the same thing, but they are using different terms to describe it. The kingdom of God describes who owns it...God. The kingdom of heaven describes where its seat of authority is based...heaven. They can be used interchangeably. It’s like saying the kingdom of Great Britain or the kingdom of King Charles. They both mean the same thing. Why did Jesus talk so much about the Kingdom? Because He is the King, and He wants His kingdom citizens to understand how His Kingdom operates. Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Here, Jesus was teaching us not to be worried about our physical needs in this world. Things like, food, clothes, and a place to live. Instead of being consumed with our physical needs, we should be concerned about our spiritual needs first. And the answer to our spiritual needs are found in the Kingdom. The truth is that most Christians spend all their time trying to use the world’s system to figure out how to get stuff we want...not to mention the stuff we actually need. The Kingdom says the opposite is true. We should be concerned about figuring out how
to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Because if you do that, God will take care of the physical needs. Matthew 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. The Kingdom has to be sought because it has been hidden. You don’t just stumble across the Kingdom. You have to be diligently looking for it. You have to seek it for yourself. Don’t just expect me to give it to you. I can’t give you something that doesn’t belong to me. You have to seek the Owner for it. The reason Jesus came to earth was to re-establish the spiritual kingdom form of government that God originally put into place. Isaiah 9:6-7 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,” Everything Jesus did and taught during His 3 year ministry was to show us the attitude, power, authority and posture we are supposed to exhibit in the earth, in order to expand His kingdom. In order to understand the kingdom you have to understand the concept of the kingdom. If you don't understand the concept then you will have a misconception of the idea of the kingdom of God. In order to seek God’s Kingdom, we need to understand what a Kingdom is. This is where things can get difficult for Americans. We grew up believing that kingdoms were only in fairy tales.
The last time we Americans were under a king, we rebelled and declared independence. So we don’t really care too much for the idea of a king owning us. And that is one of the main problems with the American church. “We have Americanized the gospel and we have spiritualized the American dream. Neither has anything to do with the Kingdom.” - Tony Miller We have a difficult time accepting the fact that the Kingdom is real and it is not a democracy. In a democracy the people have a voice and a right to be heard. It’s written into the constitution. In a democracy, if you don’t like the mayor, you vote in a new one. In a democracy, if you don’t like a law, you vote to change it. In a democracy the people are in charge...But in a kingdom, the king is charge. He is sovereign over all things and has no need of the average man’s opinion concerning anything. That’s why... In a kingdom, You do not get to vote on who gets to be the king. In a kingdom, You do not get to vote on what the king can do. In a kingdom, you do not get to vote on the laws. In a kingdom...there is no voting. There is only the word of the king. A Kingdom has principles that govern it, and keys to unlock its power and authority. Matthew 18:18 "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. "Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.... This verse illustrates how the kingdom will back us up when we are doing His will in the earth. This is the same concept of authority that we see in the colonies of the Roman Empire.
There was no concept of kingdom that was a correct model until the Roman empire ruled the world. And that's why Jesus came during the Roman Empire. The colonization concept was the way Rome ruled over their conquered territories and the people of that time would have understood the kingdom language Jesus used. Every empire that came before the Roman empire would go in and conquer an area and then take the people of that area back as slaves. When Rome took over an area they actually left the people there and installed a governor in place to rule as Rome rules. This idea of creating colonies was a new concept. The people who had surrendered to Rome would not be turned into slaves, on the contrary, they would instead be turned into Roman citizens. These new Roman citizens would now adopt the ways of Rome. This is how the Roman Empire was expanded through the known world. The phrase “when in Rome” came from this. Because when you were in one of those Roman colonies...you were “in Rome”, even though you had never been to Italy. When you are a kingdom citizen you are to conduct yourself “on earth as in heaven.” Keep this in mind: Earth is a colony of Heaven. This Roman system of colonization continued because it allowed foreign lands to be ruled from a distance through the use of a Governor. A Governor was chosen from the Kings court, because he could be trusted to have the king’s interest as his top priority. The governor is chosen by the king to be his ambassador in the colony. For our purposes today, I’ll use ambassador and governor interchangeably, because in a colony their function is essentially the same.
In America, we started as a British colony. There was a Governor in charge of each colony and he was King George’s ambassador. Now here’s the thing about an ambassador, if you are talking to the ambassador...you are talking to the king. The ambassador is the embodiment of the kingdom. If a foreigner assaults an ambassador it’s not just a simple assault. It’s considered an international incident. They have actually assaulted the kingdom. Since an ambassador is the embodiment of the kingdom government, he doesn’t build his own house, the kingdom does. And it’s not built to the standards of the colony, it’s built to the standards of the kingdom. That’s why we have governor’s mansions. The governor rules the colony as the king’s ambassador and everything goes along just fine...until the citizens decide they don’t want to do what the governor says. They don’t like having a king. They don’t like the laws. They want to rule themselves and create their own laws. What do they do next? They rebel and declare independence from the kingdom. The word rebel is the same as the Hebrew word for sin. The first person to leave when a colony of citizens declare independence is the governor. And when the governor leaves, the kingdom has left. Does any of this sound familiar? God is The King. The first citizens in the colony were Adam and Eve. Jesus came to restore His kingdom in the earth. The Governor sent from the King’s court is the Holy Spirit. The first Adam fell and lost the kingdom. The second Adam, Jesus, came to restore it. That’s why He thought us to pray like this: Matthew 6:10 “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
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