To
be a member of God's kingdom and to have this kingdom operative
within us we need to ask a few questions, these are the same
questions we were taught while in English class in elementary school.
They are, who, what, where, when and how. With this said I will
proceed with our searching, and keeping these questions in mind while
doing so. We have covered most of the kingdom of heaven terms in
Matthews synoptic gospel where it is recorded, where the others state
the kingdom of God as shown as parallel passages. Our questions
should be stated something like this, where is this kingdom to be
active, to whom is it promised, when was it promised, how is it
received, of what does it consist, how is it entered and finally is
it now a living reality? Many of these questions have been answered
already but we will find a deeper meaning and revelation of them as
we progress with the kingdom of God. I asked these and other
questions while I was going about putting together this study on my
own, as the ground work, to see what learning of Christ reveals. That
I may discover, not knowing fully, what laid ahead for me. To find
the answer to these and other questions not yet thought of, I will
begin searching all referenced passages to the kingdom of God. I
deliberately held back from doing this because, this one is larger
than the kingdom of heaven passages and because of the depth of their
revelation of the term, Christ. Where the term Christ, in actuality,
holds the hidden meaning of the God head, the fullness of the Holy
Spirit at work within, when He is restored to those who have become
child like through unconditional trust and thereby are receptive of
Him, in what has been called the fear of God in the OT. Because the
term of the kingdom of God is carried over into Paul's, Peter's,
James, John's and Jude's revelation of the ontological essence of
Christ, now at work within us. Paul's being of a greater importance
because it is in more depth of revelation than the others, this is
witnessed to by Peter himself, as we will see later.
There
remains one other thing I may have spoken of earlier but it bears
repeating and it is this, because of our fallen nature we have within
us a blindness of mind, the Lord Jesus called it a splinter or beam
in Matthew 7 and its parallel passages. This beam if not removed by
Him will continue to be a throne in our side because every time we
read the OT it will remain veiled to us. And this same veil carries
over into the NT because of the link between the old and the new,
which a good steward reveals as stated by Jesus in Matthew 13:52.
This veil is what our minds eye is preprogrammed to see and thusly
hinders our thinking and reception of revelation, which by the way
comes from within our re-birthed soul (the quickened spirit when it
receives the Light of Life in Truth). It is with the mind that we
make judgments based on our perception of what we see and then
believe the word is saying (as observations). In Matthew 7:3-5, 6;
Jesus is telling us that our perception is clouded or veiled by how
mans mind processes information of the spiritual kind and that this
is based on what we have been told or programmed to believe as true
when in fact it is not. We often operate in fear without movement
toward and into rationalization. This is witnessed to in Proverbs
4:20-27, Isaiah 55:3 and Matthew 13:3-9. This is one reason why so
many are resistant to change and why Israel remains blind or in
ignorance, not knowing the choice they have stuck with for eons, ages
and years. In most cases this happens in our early childhood and is
carried over into adulthood and is a stumblingblock, and is further
exacerbated by religion, as a spirit of slumber (Isaiah 29:10; Romans
11:8, 2Corinthians 3:14-15). This is also witnessed to by both John
the Baptist and Jesus when they called those of the Hebrew Priesthood
vipers, whited sepulchers and tombs full of dead mans bones and other
such phrases in the synoptic gospels. By their use of these terms
they bring to light the error of those caught in Religion as these
men were.
The
kingdom of God.
I
covered this earlier and it bears repeating, because of what it
reveals in way of confirmation to what I have said about our
perception needing to be cleared, or the beam in our eye being
removed by Christ. This to is taken from the Beatitudes, the Sermon
on the Mount.
No
man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love
the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon (the
world, and self personified as an object of worthship).
(parallel
passage 1Kings 18:21;
Luke
11:34-36, 16:13; Galatians 1:10, James 4:4)
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