Priority of the Kingdom (1 of 4) Mike Connell 24.06.2007 am
In two or three week's time we're going to be starting the course Undercover, so I want to begin to start to just sow some seeds out towards that before we go there. I want to talk about the Kingdom of God and I want to just show you some things from the word of God. I'm going to do it over a couple of Sundays. Next Sunday I want to look at the difference between democracy and the kingdom. What you're going to find is as we start to teach on the kingdom of God, I want you to really be open for God to work something in your heart. You know you can know lots of things, but not actually have a changed life and what really counts is a changed life. I remember when I first heard someone speak about the kingdom of God - I've looked back at the message and I thought I don't know how that made any difference to me; but God switched the lights on in me. My prayer for us as a church is that right across the church God will switch the lights on for you, to see something you've never seen before.
So I want to over the first couple of weeks before we get into the course Undercover, I want to just share some things that give you a perspective or why it is we need to position ourselves undercover. The course itself will be evidence, what we need to do and how to face and deal with certain issues. But I want to give something like the bigger picture, so today I want to do the first in a series of two or three, just before we lead in to the whole Undercover series. I do encourage you to get the book and make it your devotional study, and ask the Holy Ghost to speak to you. Ask God to talk to you. Okay, I want you to have a look with me in Matthew 6:33. This is one of my favourite verses in the Bible, one that I have just loved and valued for years, and here it is. I don't have to turn to it, I know it of course, Matthew 6:33. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.
So I want to talk to you today about the priority of the kingdom of God. We're going to look further into these verses, going to share a few verses with you, but I want to look around these verses in Matthew 6. So it says seek first the kingdom of God, so when you think about kingdom what do you think of? Now of course if you're a church person, you've been around church for a long time, well it's just another word. You use it in church, don't use it anywhere else. You don't go in your business and use the word kingdom. You don't go anywhere in society and use the word kingdom. In fact you don't use it anywhere, and because we don't use it anywhere we've got no kind of framework within which to understand when the Bible is talking about the kingdom what it's really talking about. And so what tends to happen is we approach the things of God from the viewpoint shaped by our culture, and our culture in the west is not kingdom-oriented. Our kingdom in the west is very much democratic in its government, democratic.
Next week I'll talk a little bit about the difference between the democratic form of government and some of its inherent weaknesses, and the kingdom of God government, the divine government that God has intended. It'll really help you to understand why so many believers struggle is because we come and we get born again into the kingdom of God, but we don't change in our thinking and approach to how we run our life. So what happens is we are part of the kingdom of God with a whole new access to new privilege, but we don't access it because we're still thinking and living out of a democratic mindset. It's very hard for us in the west to understand this, and I'll show you why shortly. If you go to Thailand for example and you talk about kingdom, oh, kingdom! Immediately everyone knows what you're talking - they know the king. The king there is the longest serving king in any nation in the earth. They love their king in Thailand.
You make any comments about the king, you'll be in jail. They love their king. Their king is benevolent, their king cares about the people, the king intervenes in the nation at times to ensure that the welfare of the people is looked after. He personally has initiated projects for the welfare of the people. The people in Thailand love their king. They had a celebration of his anniversary a while ago and the whole nation celebrated. Then you look around some other parts of the world, say a bit nearer to us. Those who are from the Islands would understand this. Tonga is a kingdom. They have a king, and he operates in a certain kind of way. So if you'd been born in Tonga you would understand about kingdom and you'd have a certain idea about what the king was like and various things related to that. But you see we're in the west now and we don't understand that.