The Kingdom of God pt 2
Episode two
I'd start off with a joke: there were these two evil brothers very cruel and then one died. The other told the pastor, let's make a deal. I'd make a huge donation to the church then at the funeral you'd say my brother was a saint. The pastor said ok. He made the donation and at the funeral the pastor said; this was an evil man, he cheated, he lied, he stole but compared to his brother he was a saint.
Let's read
Matthew 13:45-46
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it."
Brethren that means until we find the kingdom we keep accumulating other things. We accumulate religion, physical material possessions, jobs and business ideas, all kinds of friendships but we are really looking for the kingdom. And Jesus says when a man finds the kingdom he has everything because he found everything in that one thing; the kingdom of God.
Today there are 7.5billion people on earth and 99% of them don't know why they're on the planet. They go about all their daily work routines etc and live it all over again day after day. People are more concerned about making a living than making a difference, they're trying to find life than live life.
As we move on, we will discover that the word 'church', literally, is a political description of a governmental entity, it isn't a religious component at all.
Some people think that the church was created by God, for example, to prepare men to go to heaven, when you study the words of Jesus Christ, you discover that that's opposite to what he said the church was for. As a matter of fact, the mission of the church is not to leave earth but to change earth, not to escape it but to occupy it.
God created earth to be an extension of heaven, he created earth to be a colony of heaven. This is God's original plan.
Why is the kingdom message so important and why the kingdom?
WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD?
First of all the kingdom is not a religion. That's important to note. The number one source of problems in the world today is religion. All the problems on earth right now including terrorism is motivated by religion. Religion has been the cause of many deaths than any other in history.
Obviously Christ did not bring a religion to earth because religion is the problem. When Jesus came to earth he met a very powerful religion here.
Jesus Christ had only one opposition. His greatest opposition was never sinners!, think about it a minute, his number one opposition was religious leaders. Why? Because his message was against religion, let's read Matthew 5:20 "For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." He's telling us no matter what you do with your religion, no one can be more religious than the pharasees.
Two thousand years ago the religion was so powerful, so awesome, it was so controlling that every single part of society was controlled by religion. And Jesus said your religion will have to be surpassed in order for you to understand the kingdom of God in other words religion will never satisfy you, no matter what you do, your rituals your customs, he said none of that can compare or compete with the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is the only gospel that Jesus preached. Here's a verse that Jesus himself is recorded as saying Luke 4:43 But He said, “I must preach [the good news of] the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because that is why I was sent.”
The word why means purpose
Let's read it again; But He said, “I must preach [the good news of] the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because I was sent for this purpose.”
He just told us his major purpose for coming to earth, most of us think it was to die on the cross, to be a sacrifice, to shed his blood and to rise from the dead and all that, all those things are important but according to Jesus the reason why he came to earth was to deliver a message back to earth and that message was specific, he says the good news of the kingdom of God. The words good news literally means gospel, and everytime Jesus uses the word gospel 99% of the time he had to define what he meant. You see the word good news could be for anything; if you got a raise at work that's gospel, it's good news. If someone gave you $200000 as a gift that's good news, why, its something that happened that was good. If someone told you you got promoted on your job to be a manager or vice Prez that's gospel, good news. You can have good news of anything this is why the word gospel is not enough when we talk about the message of the Bible. The word gospel must be defined everytime he used the term; look at the text again 'I must preach the gospel ' but then he defines it of the kingdom of God. The good news is the kingdom of God. He says that when he does that he says that's why I was sent.
In the next part