We've not stopped to check it, whether it actually is biblical or not. So what I want to do is just talk about the kingdom. So we saw last week what we got into and looked at was we saw Jesus preaching, Matthew 4:17, the beginning of His message and the whole of His message was about the kingdom of God. So right from the beginning He spoke repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And all His ministry, if you've started to read through the Book of the Gospels, you'll see it's all about the kingdom. How many have started to read it and look for that? Okay, there's a couple. That's probably why I've got to do a series of about four, see? Because I actually asked you to read it again and look for what the Bible plainly says, because if you don't look for it you won't find it. Okay then, and the second thing we saw, Luke 9:2, we saw there that the disciples were sent out and Jesus gave them the message they should preach. They should preach the kingdom of God.
So from the beginning of the Bible to the end, all through Jesus' teaching, He was preoccupied about teaching about the kingdom of God, so we should have an understanding of it. We saw in the Book of Acts 28:31, Paul preached the kingdom of God and the things concerning Jesus Christ. So when you look at the whole thrust of the New Testament it all is about the kingdom of God; Jesus announced it. He demonstrated it. He taught about it. He taught the principles of it, taught how to live it, empowered people to preach it, and the whole of the New Testament is about the kingdom of God advancing - and so that's why it's so important. Now Matthew 6:33, He says now seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So Jesus made it very clear that the priority, the first two priorities we should have in our life once we're a believer; number one is to seek first the kingdom of God. Number two is to seek His righteousness. We'll just explain them.
The kingdom of God literally refers to a realm or an area where a king rules. It's the governmental rule of a king, so it says first above everything else, seek that God's way of doing things becomes established in your life. That's probably the simplest way to describe it. The second thing is seek His righteousness. In other words that means seek to learn from the word of God how to position yourself so the blessings of God can come into your life. Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean God's blessings become realised in your life. You have to position yourself for them - so it says seek number one, to understand the ways God operates and how He has directed for life to be run. In other words seek first His rule, His ways being established on the earth. And then secondly, seek to position yourself in your personal life so that you can connect with Him and can draw upon what He's made available for you - so for example, all can prophesy but many don't. But all can. All can pray for the sick, but lots don't. All can cast out demons, but most don't.
All can see God's blessing released, but most don't. All can have prosperity in their life in various levels, but a lot of people don't position themself for that to happen. So positioning has to do with our understanding how to come near to God, how to approach Him, how to live in relationship with Him and how to overcome the constant barrage of accusations the devil puts to put us down. If I'm put down and I don't know where I stand, I can't release heaven into the earth. So next week I'll share with you about the kingdom mandate, in other words what God has given to us. Now we want to look today, I want to just look at this issue of government. We'll go and pick up and I have to lay just a couple of things out first before I can talk the difference between democracy and the kingdom. Let's just go into Genesis 1:26, so if you could just give me just a few minutes to just lay out just some simple things, and they are evident but if you don't have the background you don't get the big picture.