BS3B -THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS THE KEY TO FINDING OUR PURPOSE
We live at a time when democracy (or rule of the people) is the preferred government for at least half of the world – mainly in the west. But, God’s preferred form of government for us is a kingdom and few of us really understand what a kingdom is or how it operates. Therefore, it’s easy to miss Christ’s main message when He came. Jesus didn’t come to bring us a new religion. He came to bring back the Kingdom of God which we lost through sin.
Let’s start at the beginning.
God is King over Heaven and earth because He created it all.
Genesis 1:1 / Psalm 102:25 / Hebrews 11:3
But…..God gave the earth to men and women.
Psalm 115:16
And the reason God gave us the earth was so that we could rule over it – not each other --- but all the plants and animals that He made and would need tending or taming for our use.
Genesis 1:26 / Genesis 9:2 / Psalm 8:6 / James 3:7
In kingdom language, God’s original intent was for the earth to be a colony of Heaven where God could extend his sovereign rule and authority and do it through men and women who loved Him and wanted to live and walk in partnership with Him.
His kingdom was to be a place where everyone was loved, accepted, and then have a unique role to play in the development of the universe.
Ephesians 2:10
There was to be no lack in the Kingdom of God because men and women would find God’s resources everywhere on earth and then use them to make things better for everyone else.
Sadly, this is not the kind of world we live in today. What is called “the fall of man” was the most catastrophic event in human history. It occurred because our first parents – Adam and Eve – failed the one test of free will that God gave them. God told them that they could partake of any of the great fruit trees in the Garden of Eden -- except for one -- which God called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.
Genesis 3:1-6
By eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” Adam and Eve made a decision to live by their own knowledge of right and wrong, independent from what God thought. This is what all sin really is: It’s just living our lives independent from God and his will for us. Sadly, even those who say that they believe in God, live independent of Him. And that is why God says these words about us:
Isaiah 53:6a / Romans 3:23
Even though it was Adam and Eve who sinned, it’s still having its affect on us today. Sin opened the door to death (which wasn’t part of God’s plan) and then what happened?
Romans 5:12
You and I are clearly part of the “all” who sin and the consequences have spread to us too.
Many of us protest at this because we feel we are “good people”, doing good things, raising good families, or operating good businesses that help others as well as ourselves. But who are we in God’s eyes?
Genesis 6:5 / Isaiah 64:6
How WE see ourselves is of no consequence. It’s only how GOD sees us that really matters. If we persist in claiming our innocence despite what God says, what will be true?
1 John 1:8, 10
God, who knows everything, knew that we would choose to live independent from his will and so he actually had a plan in place before the foundation of the world to deal with our sin. That plan would allow for His sovereign rule and authority to return to earth by coming in the form of Jesus. His kingdom could then begin to extend itself on earth through any person who would align themselves with the King’s Son. And that’s why Jesus told us…..
John 10:7, 9
Jesus is the one and only door into the Kingdom of God. Of course, there are plenty of people trying to get in by their own good works, or other devised means. But what was Christ’s apostle Peter adamant about when he started to preach to the Jewish people?
Acts 4:12
And the Apostle Paul backed him up.
Acts 13:38-39
For those of us who receive the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus and are declared right with God (righteous), Jesus gives us two priorities for living our lives. What are they?
Matthew 6:31-33
What does this mean?
The Kingdom of God is the rule of God over our hearts and lives. But, why would we want God’s rule instead of being free to do what WE wanted to do? If we think about it, we’ll be able to answer that question.
God as our Creator knows why He made us, and what the purpose of our life is. So, if we align our life with the Creator, then we make a choice to live out the purpose for our lives. Our priorities in life actually become God’s priorities lived out through us. And there is nothing more satisfying than living out the purpose God made us for. Jesus is a testimony to that.
John 17:4
The apostle Paul felt the same way at the end of his life.
2 Timothy 4:7
Now God wants that for each of us and we’ll find that purpose as we seek first His kingdom or His rule over our lives.
But what about the second priority that Jesus says we should seek for – i.e. God’s righteousness. What does that mean?
It means that we should seek for the kind of righteous behavior that we see demonstrated in Christ’s life. Here are a few descriptions about how Christ’s righteousness showed itself.
Psalm 45:7 / Isaiah 11:5 / Jeremiah 23:5 / Hebrews 4:15
It’s much more than doing all the right things. If that were the case, the Scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus’ time would have been role models for us. But just listen to the words that Jesus had to say about the scribes and the Pharisees.
Matthew 23:1-36
These guys were great at religious talk but they didn’t practice what they preached. Therefore, what did Jesus advise the ordinary folks who listened to them?
Matthew 23:3
Outwardly these Jewish leaders looked like righteous people but how does Jesus describe them from the inside?
Matthew 23:28
Jesus could say this because He was God. He knew them right down to their hearts and minds.
So, if our first priority is to invite God’s rule and authority over our lives, then our second priority is to seek the kind of love for God and men that Jesus demonstrated. And in our seeking, we’ll find that it’s “something” we can’t do on our own but is “someone” God has for us to receive, and then experience.
This “something” is what Jesus called the “New Birth”. We are meant to experience the life of Heaven even while we live on earth. However, we have no spiritual senses by which the unseen world of Heaven can be known until we are “born again”. We are born again when Jesus gives us His very own Holy Spirit to abide within our human spirit. This is the “someone” whom we receive when we align our lives with the King’s Son Jesus.
In today’s computer age we don’t expect our laptop to run without an operating system. So too, Christ’s Spirit within us becomes our new “operating system” and our lost spiritual senses become restored to us. When we are born again our dead human spirit becomes alive with Christ’s Holy Spirit and we are able to perceive the things of God. It’s like a veil gets lifted from our eyes and we can now see clearly.
2 Corinthians 3:16-17
Having Christ’s Spirit indwelling our own spirit enables us to have our dead spirits (caused by sin) to be made alive so that we can perceive the things of God and of Heaven. We are able to see what others can’t see without the Spirit of Jesus. What does the Holy Spirit help us to see and understand?
1 Corinthians 2:9-13
How do we go about receiving Christ’s Spirit?
When we come to the place where we recognize and acknowledge that we have a sin problem and can’t fix what’s wrong with us ourselves, then we are in the right place to see our need for a Savior and what He has to offer. Here is how King David expressed it when he came to that realization for his own life.
Psalm 51:4-5
We begin to feel dirty or impure when we think about being in the presence of God or others who love God. It means we are beginning to glimpse some of what God sees about us, and it’s cause to rejoice because we are coming closer to what God wants from us – real repentance. When King David saw himself as God saw him, he poured out his heart in true repentance.
Psalm 51:1-19
When we “repent” it means that we turn around and go in the opposite direction from how we have been going. And when we turn around, we’ll be able to see the Savior standing there beckoning us to “come”. That’s the first thing Jesus asks of us.
Isaiah 1:18 / Isaiah 55:1 / Matthew 11:28
The truth is that all along Jesus has been knocking at the door of our hearts so that He can come in and have fellowship with us.
Revelation 3:20
Some of the doors that Jesus knocks on are people proclaiming that they don’t believe in God. Others are people (like the Laodiceans in Revelation 3:20) who say they believe in God and even go to church, but keep Jesus at a distance.
When we open the door of our hearts to Jesus – even just a crack -- we find that he is gentle and lowly of heart – not pushy at all. He offers His Spirit to all of us but never forces anything on us. Jesus knows that all this is scary to us because we fear what we don’t know. He knows that our human spirit is dead without His life filling it. He wants to restore us and bring us back into the family of God.
This new birth has nothing to do with our physical life. It’s man’s spirit (the deepest part of us) that is dead in sin without the life of God filling it. It’s about being born again spiritually. This is what Jesus tries to explain to Nicodemus (a Pharisee seeking the Messiah).
John 3:1-5
John 3:5 give us the two requirements for entering the Kingdom of God:
A. First, we are “born of water”. This refers to a baptism for the repentance of our sins. We recognize that we are sinners because we have inherited the fallen nature of our parents. This inherited sin nature causes us naturally to sin and it erupts in different ways in all of us. When we repent what is the result?
1 John 1:9
- Second, we are “born of the Spirit” when we accept and receive Christ’s Spirit into our own. Without His Spirit replacing our old sinful nature, we are just “forgiven sinners” without the power we need to live our life in God’s Kingdom. Therefore, our part is to ask Jesus to give us His Spirit. But will He give His Spirit to someone like me? That’s what we all ask and here is our answer:
Luke 11:13
The reason we repent of our sins first is so that we will have a “clean house” for the Holy Spirit to live in. He will not move into a house full of sin’s filth and we wouldn’t either!
Jesus used the example of children to express what our attitude must be if we want to enter God’s family.
Luke 18:15-17
It’s having a child-like attitude (not childish but child-like) that enables us to get past our fear and come to Jesus as these children did. And what is a child-like attitude? I suggest there are four main things about children that God loves and wants us to manifest throughout our lives.
First, they are humble. They know who they are and they don’t try to be anything but children.
Second, they are dependent. Children rely on their parents for everything. In the same way, God wants us to be dependent upon Him. This is opposite to the badge of independence that most of us love to wear.
Third, they are trusting. They aren’t all worked up as to when the next meal will come, or if they’ll have a bed to sleep in. They know that their parents will take care of them. God wants us to be like that.
Finally, they are teachable. Because children don’t know everything, they can still learn and grow. It’s the attitude that allows us to grow and keep growing in the things of God.
If we don’t have the attitude of a child we probably won’t come to Jesus because we feel that we can handle things on our own.
But, once we do come to Jesus, what does he ask of us? It’s the common phrase in all of these verses.
John 8:12 / John 10:27 / John 12:26
First we come, then we follow and finally, Jesus asks that we abide in Him. Abide means to remain in Jesus or live in Him. Why does He ask this of us?
John 15:4-5
The logical question for us is HOW do we abide in Jesus? When we receive Christ’s Spirit into our own, the Holy Spirit becomes the link for us to stay on the vine – the conduit for Christ’s life to flow into our own.
Romans 8:11
Christ’s Holy Spirit replace our old carnal nature and what do we become?
2 Corinthians 5:17
All of us like to feel the reward that our own efforts bring because we are all about “doing”. But when it comes to our redemption and spiritual rebirth, it’s all about honoring Jesus who was the one that did it all.
John 5:21-24
Will we “feel” any different? Maybe, or maybe not. How we feel has nothing to do with anything. Jesus offers us His Spirit freely. After we repent of our sins and receive God’s forgiveness, we can receive what Jesus offers us “by faith”.
Faith is the hand that reaches out to accept what Jesus offers because we know that God always keeps His word to us. Once you tell Jesus that “you want and accept His Holy Spirit”, then you take it by faith that Jesus has given Himself to you whether you feel different or not.
Don’t miss the simplicity of these verses in John 5:21-24. Any of us who recognize and honor Jesus as the Son of God, who gave his life for us, and then came back to life from the dead will not miss getting their citizenship papers in the Kingdom of God! And it’s there that you’ll ultimately find your purpose in life.
Next Study: BS3C-God is Our Father
For further study on living in the Kingdom of God