THY KINGDOM COME

THY KINGDOM COME

                “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Mt. 6:10

                There are 4 basic concepts of the Kingdom in the Body of Christ today. These four concepts have prevailed for 2000 years now and we can see the fruit of one or another of these 4 concepts as played out in the church.

1.       THE KINGDOM AS SYNONYMOUS WITH HEAVEN

                In this concept when we pray “Thy kingdom come…” we are thinking of the future when earth’s kingdoms will fall and Jesus will bring His kingdom at last. We will go with Jesus, we will escape trouble, tribulation and injustice and we will go to be with the Lord.

2.       THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM ARE VIRTUALLY SYNONYMOUS

                In this concept of the church being the kingdom, we hold fast to its rules and offer its teachings as an end in themselves. Our goal is to get people into the church and thus into the kingdom. We see historical manifestations of this concept in the Catholic Church as in times past they force-baptized people and anyone who did not conform to its teaching and hierarchy were excommunicated and given over to death in one form or another.

                Islam has this same concept wherein Allah is the only true god and everybody must be made to bow down and to serve him, or die.

3.       THE KINGDOM EXISTS PRIMARILY IN AND FOR THE HEART

                In this concept of the kingdom we concentrate on matters of the heart. It doesn’t look so much to the future, but concentrates on a personal relationship with Jesus and personal holiness. This tends to make the gospel of the kingdom very small, for it is centered in the self and has no vision for taking the Kingdom of God into the world, thus bringing tangible change into the lives of people both far and near.

4.       THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS HIS TRANSFORMING PRESENCE AND POWER AT WORK IN THE WORLD.

                Certainly all of these four concepts are included in Christ’s message to the world. His ultimate goal is for us to be saved and to inhabit eternity with Him. Likewise Jesus had much to say about the condition of our hearts, along with the promise that He would indeed enter into us and transform us into His image from glory to glory. But the sum total of Christ’s message certainly moved beyond the personal level, to a commission to reach the whole world with the power of the gospel. And again, Jesus taught about the future kingdom as something that is coming in which righteousness, peace and justice will once again reign.

                The truth is the Gospel of the kingdom requires both belief and action. It is both a future reality and a present reality as we work the works of Christ in the world.

THE Body of Christ is largely dead today. We congratulate ourselves for being obedient to God’s “Dead” Commandments while completely ignoring his “Living“ Commandments. What do I mean by this?  I mean that keeping the 10 commandments only helps us to maintain the status quo. The Ten Commandments is only what every good citizen should be doing. These are the basic laws of civilization. If we are civil, we will not lie, cheat, steal or commit murder.

On the other hand, Christ’s “Living” Commandments are to go, to heal, to teach, to baptize, to make disciples, to restore justice, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked as in Isaiah 58.

                Jesus came into the world in the fullness of time. Religion had gone about as far is it could go.  They had hundreds of laws on how to keep the law. They had hundreds of laws on how to keep the Sabbath. So Jesus came along and in today’s language, He said: “Hey guys, you’ve got it all backwards. I did not create YOU to serve the SABBATH. I created the SABBATH to serve YOU.”

                We pride ourselves in being God’s Remnant because we keep the commandments… but Jesus said: “This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the entire world to a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come. Essentially Jesus taught us what the true Gospel of the Kingdom was in juxtaposition to what the Pharisees were doing and teaching. They spent all of their time in the temple batting around this and that fine point of the law, while Jesus was out demonstrating what the Gospel of His kingdom really was.

                He was out healing the sick, cleansing lepers, restoring sight to the blind, setting free those who were in bondage and dividing His bread with the hungry. (Again see Isaiah 58)

                At His first coming, dead religion and the living kingdom of God came to a final showdown and dead religion put the Living Kingdom to death in the cruelest way possible. But truth cannot remain in the grave. Truth is reality. Truth is the way things really are. Truth is built upon eternal foundations. Truth must win in the end even if it has to rise from the dead to do so.

                The Pharisees had the truth as it was on stone. They were not wrong. But Jesus came to breathe life into the truth. This is why He proclaimed that we must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Truth is like dry bones until the breath of life is breathed into them. Then they come together and grow flesh and skin and life and they rise up to form a mighty army.

                Jesus spoke into dead religion and said: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.” John 6:53-56.

                And then Jesus went on to say: “It is the “Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” John 6:63

                But whereas dead religion sits in church and maintains the status quo; living truth goes out and brings the powers of the age to come into our present reality.  It doesn’t just sit and wait for the kingdom to come. It draws the powers of that future kingdom into our present realm and it demonstrates these powers by doing ministry the way Jesus did it rather than the way the Pharisees did it.

                Ezekiel had a vision of a coming kingdom temple. It had a river of life flowing out of it and the amazing thing was that the farther it got from the temple the deeper and wider the river became until it was over his head.

                As we go out from our place of safety in the temple and begin to minister to the poor and needy and the sick and dying, we too will soon find ourselves in over our heads. And with that kind of living only the miraculous power of God can keep us afloat. When our feet can no longer touch the bottom, then we must stand upon the “Rock and that Rock is Jesus Christ.

                Is it ever so slightly possible that Jesus is delaying His return until His Remnant people add the testimony of Jesus to their commandment keeping? The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. It is the Person of the Holy Spirit that brings to us the life and mission of Jesus to take the Gospel of the Kingdom into the entire world as well as to empower us to do demonstrate the powers of that kingdom by doing the works that Jesus did and even greater works.

                Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and demonstrating its power in the works that He did, and He did not do this as our substitute, but as our example. He sent out the 12 two by two and then the 70 two by two and they came back rejoicing that even the demons obeyed them.

                At no point in time did Jesus say to His disciples: “Now go and do what I did and when you die, the Gospel of the Kingdom will die with you… the power will be cut off and I will expect the church from that time forward to do what I did without My help.” Did He say that? No! So why does a rebellious church teach that these things died with the disciples and the apostles?

                Quite the opposite Jesus said: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father  and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Mt. 29:18-20.

                Here Jesus says a mouthful. He says:

1.       “All authority has been given Me in heaven and on earth.” And if you do a study on the authority that has been given to Jesus, you will come to realize that all means all and that the Father has given Jesus all authority until the time of the new creation when Jesus will again give it back to the Father and He will be all in all.

2.       He tells us, not just to win converts, but to make disciples. Who does that anymore?

3.       He tells us to go into every nation. So here we see the vision of Ezekiel in which the river gets deeper and wider the further out he goes from the temple. This is even true today where we see God’s miraculous power at work in heathen lands, but very little of it at home because we have become saturated with truth, upon which we have failed to take action.

4.       He shows us the involvement of all three persons of the godhead in bringing the world to salvation. Just as in creation, the Father commands, Jesus speaks the commandment forth and the Holy Spirit carries it out, breathing life into all who hear and obey. His words become life in us so that our hands become the hands of Jesus, and we become the Body of Christ carrying in His work in the world.

5.       He also taught us to observe all that He commanded us. So here, because we have become dead religion, we immediately relate this “All that I have commanded you” to the Ten Commandments while ignoring His living commandments to feed the poor, heal the sick, cast out demons, restore sight to the blind and in general to demonstrate the powers of the age to come by bringing them into our present reality.

6.       Here then at last He defies all of these would be preachers of truth by saying that He will be with us always, even to the end of the age. His Gospel of the Kingdom is not going  to lose His presence or His power until all is accomplished.

                To say that miracles are not for now is to take a stand in direct opposition to Jesus Christ Himself. And missionaries in remote countries of the world prove this over and over again as they do all of the works of Christ on a daily basis. Their stages are piled high with crutches, wheel chairs, braces as cripples are healed, blind eyes are opened and deaf ears are opened.

                 Even at that some missionaries go overseas bringing their dead religion with them, making members instead of disciples and struggling to make ends meet. But when by the power of Christ you do the works of Christ people come from all over the countryside to hear the good news and to see it verified with signs and wonders. The Gospel of the Kingdom creates its own success and advertisement.

                Some of these dead missionaries will sit back and say, “Well it must be the devil doing the healing, because we have “The Truth.” But I ask you; who is really doing the work of Christ in the world and who is it that is really keeping His commandments?

                Does this add an altogether new perspective to God’s identity of the Remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus? It’s not talking about a dead observance of the Law, but a living demonstration of the Law as demonstrated by Jesus.

                As those who aspire to be God’s Remnant people, we need to enter into the living work of Christ and to demonstrate the powers of His coming Kingdom. Don’t just teach people to sit and wait for the rapture. We need to equip them with the power of Christ and then send them out to do His works. But that means we have to have that power first, if we are to give it to others. And so we must pray like never before, along with repenting for falling short of the glory of God.

                If we are to rightly perceive the times, then we must also rightly perceive our mission.