Kingdom Mandate (3 of 4) Mike Connell 08.07.2007 am
Ephesians 1, we're on a series on the Kingdom of God. Last week we talked about the difference between a democracy, what a democracy's like and what a kingdom's like and what it is of course, we are part of and our citizenship is in the kingdom of God but we have to live in a democracy. An interesting thing is that there's nowhere in the Bible where anyone's instructed to overthrow the government, so throughout the Bible no matter what the government was, never did the people of God arise to overthrow it. What they did was showed the superiority of the kingdom of God within it, and eventually of course kingdoms came and kingdoms fell, and we're in a democracy here. There are other countries in communism and various kinds of things, but one thing is universal; the kingdom of God is superior to every other form of government. Eventually, as we saw in the Bible, all forms of government will yield to the kingdom of God.
It's a wonderful thing to be part of it isn't it aye? But we've got to learn about it. Now I'll just pick up this verse and just start here today. We're going to just start to look towards and get some thoughts on the Kingdom Mandate, the Kingdom Mandate. A mandate is a command, something we're instructed to do. It has to do with our purpose and just let's read a couple of verses here. Paul is saying - he's talking in verse 16; I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you - now he's praying for Christians, that God would give them something - the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened or opened up; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power. Isn't that fantastic?
Paul is praying that we would receive from God wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how to do life, knowing what to do with your life, how to live your life, see? He's also praying that we would get revelation; that's to be able to understand how life works, how to see life. So you need revelation to see life as God sees it. If we don't have revelation we have an opinion. We're going to get onto that just shortly. If you don't have revelation you have an opinion, and your opinion is just your opinion. We're going to touch on this a little bit later - but when Gods word becomes clear to us and the Holy Spirit shows it to us, then we actually have revelation. We understand something we didn't understand before, so we need revelation how to see life, see? You will in building your marriage, you will build your marriage pretty well according to the pattern you were raised with with only minor variations, unless you get revelation of something better. You'll just reproduce it. See, you'll raise children the way you were raised unless you get revelation of a better way.
You'll run your finance the way you saw finances were run, unless you have revelation of a better way. So when we become born again and come into the kingdom of God we have to have revelation continually about every area of life. If we don't get revelation about every area of life, how to see life, and then wisdom, how to do life or live life, we just continue - we're now a Christian. We're in the kingdom of God, but we're operating our life the way we did before we got saved. We have the same problems everyone else has, and so Paul is praying; we need revelation, we need wisdom and we need understanding. That's insight to how it works, how life really works see. Why we need these things, you notice he tells us three reasons we need them: the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened. Now he's praying for this. In other words it's not something that comes naturally just by study. It's something the Holy Spirit has got to actually open our eyes to see. I need revelation, see?