The Kingdom of God is the place where the King reigns, and the King is Jesus. The problem often in the western church is that we have tried to reduce that to a personal experience and tried to make it about living by a set of “kingdom principles”. We are so used to doing everything on a personal experience basis and because of that we miss what God wants to do. We have a personal salvation experience, a personal walk with God, a personal ‘quiet time’ (though goodness only knows why it should be quiet!) and we often totally miss the point that whilst those things are true and right, they only represent about 20% of the picture.
The Kingdom of God is an alternative civilisation. We are saved and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the “kingdom of His dear Son” (Col. 1v 13). Read Hebrews 12. The writer starts by telling us Christians what we have not joined/come to. We have not been joined to the Old Covenant way of doing things. Then he tells us what we have been joined to, starting in verse 22:
- To the city of the living God
- To thousands and thousands of angels in a joyful gathering
- To the assembly of God’s firstborn children – ALL the believers living on the earth now
- To God Himself (remember, Three persons)
- To the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect – believers who have already died
- To Jesus, and to His sprinkled blood
There’s not much that is individualistic there. The kingdom that we are now a part of is concerned with far more than just me, and my private little Christian world. How small we have made it!
When Jesus was revealed in all His magnificent glory on the mountain top and Moses and Elijah appear, a disciple (Peter) wants to gather some twigs and build some shacks to capture the moment. The church in the west has repeated the experiment largely. God reveals a plan to create an alternative civilisation, The Kingdom of His own dear Son transforming the world, and we have gathered twigs to build our own personal shelters. Our churches, by and large, tend to be full of individuals pursuing their individual ‘walk with God’. They make little difference to society as a whole, and the view of society tends to be “well that’s nice for you, but it’s not for me”. And they’re right. It’s not for them. Jesus never meant this insular other worldly life to be for them. He has a greater far more magnificent plan – an alternative civilisation that the world can see clearly, and when it does, millions will say “that’s for me!”
This alternative civilisation, the Kingdom of God, has only one person at the head. Jesus the King. He intends to be seen clearly as the King.
He is not a figurehead like, say, our Queen. He is the ruling King with absolute power in all parts of His kingdom, who has the undying and unwavering love and commitment of His subjects (because that is what we are – willing subjects of a glorious King who loved us so much that He suffered and died for us).
The plan is for the expression of the alternative civilisation to be set in a local place, so that those who live round about can see it clearly in operation. Each local expression is called the Church. Each local expression is likened in the bible to a body, with a very clear and obvious head – Jesus. The plan is that when people look around, they see their cities, towns and communities permeated with small local churches, expressions of the alternative civilisation. They should be able to see one very obvious similarity, that in all these local groups Jesus is the head and that the one thing that sets them apart and makes their civilisation radically different from society is that they are men and women who have been with Jesus (Acts 4 v 13). Another thing that should be obvious to all is that all these expressions of the kingdom civilisation, all these local churches share the same head – Jesus. Because of that, even though each unit may be small, they function together as one organic body. They do this without convocations, committees, conferences, or any great administrative structure. It’s just that they all are subject to, and follow the same Head. When He moves, they move. Simples!
Church is out there 