What God Really Wants Us to Know (Part 3) -- "The Kingdom of God"

There is no theme, no topic in the New Testament more emphasized than this. This is not subjective opinion this is objective, verifiable fact. The Gospels report that Jesus taught the "good news of the kingdom" wherever he went and commanded his disciples to do the same. The question is, what does God want you to understand about his kingdom and why is it important to you as a child of God?

Jesus commanded his followers to, "Seek first the kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33). With those words followers of Christ have been given a clearly stated priority. But what happens if our concept of the "kingdom of God" is different, maybe even a lot different than God's concept of the kingdom of God? How likely is it to find what God wants us to find if we are looking for something completely different?

If you were asked to say whatever comes to your mind in response to hearing the phrase, "the Kingdom of God" what would you say? The answers would depend on the images you currently hold in your mind. But what if you believed that you already knew all that you need to know? How open would you be to anything more? How could God or Jesus or the Spirit of Truth reach you and help you grow in the "knowledge of the kingdom" as Jesus helped his disciples to grow? It would be impossible. So openness and spiritual humility – the willingness to consider something beyond our current understanding is essential to hearing what God wants us to know.

As we study the most repeated, most emphasized themes of God in the New Testament, perhaps the best way to overcome this common human pitfall of thinking that we know all we need to know is to imagine we "know" nothing – to completely empty ourselves of any illusion that we "know" anything. Imagine that you recently experienced some kind of trauma. Imagine that you had forgotten everything you had ever learned about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Then take your time and contemplate the Bible verses related to the "Kingdom of God" in the Appendix. Try to read them with an open mind as though you had never seen them before in your life. Even if it takes several sittings, read each verse and take a few moments to listen in quiet for guidance from the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus promised would reveal all things to us. For the maximum benefit, get a notebook and write down your thoughts and your questions, for example:

·       What exactly is the "good news of the kingdom"?

·       What is the kingdom like in terms we can understand?

·       What does it feel like to experience the kingdom of God?  

·       What does it really mean to "seek first the kingdom of God"?

·       Are we not guaranteed the kingdom of God when we're baptized or accept Christ?

·       Why in his infinite wisdom did God consider the topic so important as to repeat it so many times?

·       What are the implications for me? What difference does it make?

If we would read through the sixty verses or so in the Bible that relate to the "Kingdom of God",  clearly we could see that there is more to the kingdom of God, than a place up in the sky called "heaven" that believers go to after they die. So clearly, we have something to learn, something to discover and explore, something we might even label essential to any authentic follower of Christ. As we explore the topic of the kingdom of God in this chapter we will attempt to address multiple questions but from an organizational viewpoint we will focus on three of the most fundamental questions to provide a framework for discussion:

·       What is the "kingdom of God"?

·       How do we find it?

·       Why does God want me to know about it?