1. God is establishing us in His new kingdom.
a. This is the kingdom that Jesus came to establish on Earth.
43 And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent. Luke 4:43 (KJV)
Jesus came to bring in a new kingdom. We are to know about this kingdom, understand it and do as Jesus did and preach it to others. Most importantly we are to live in this kingdom.
b.. What is this Kingdom? It is a spiritual kingdom.
16 Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil; 17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:16-17 (NKJV)
This kingdom is not about physical things, but it does need a physical wineskin to hold it. It needs God’s structure to allow it to function best. We use things of the physical to both represent, teach and support us to grow this kingdom. It is grown in a way that is contrary to the way the physical world works and functions.
c. It is now
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. ” Matthew 4:17 (NKJV)
When we were younger, we entered the Kingdom of God when we died to our flesh. The role of the church was to bring people into salvation. The new Kingdom of God, though, is what we are to both see spiritually and know that it exists now to live in daily. Living in the knowledge that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father and all things were made through Him and for Him help us realize God’s kingdom is one where Jesus is in complete authority and His plan to redeem His world is not only a plan but is happening in our lives and in the world around us. This kingdom is a reality we learn to live in daily as we grow into maturity as sons.
d. How does it differ from the Kingdom of the world?
As we grow into sonship we start to see that this kingdom operates totally different from the world. Jesus was the Son of God but came to serve His creation. We in the world strive for happiness and what we think we need to be successful. In the Kingdom of God, we seek God’s Kingdom and He provides. The fruit of the world’s kingdom is hate, disunity, selfishness, fear and the list goes on. In the Kingdom of God, there is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We need to know this new kingdom and daily die to our flesh and walk in the Spirit, so we can fully live in this new kingdom daily.
2. We need the Kingdom of God Eyes to operate in this new Kingdom.
The world operates totally different from the Kingdom of God. As people who have been brought up where the culture has dominated our thinking and the social structures that have been developed have often started with good intentions but have ultimately failed us. As we seek God’s Kingdom we are learning to learn how to think, live and walk as sons of God and develop new ways of looking at the world. This leads to us developing radically new social structures and ways of working that align us with God’s plan for us. As we read the Bible we can see this structure which has its basis in the family. It is laid out in Genesis, Exodus and Chronicles where God establishes the family unit, the governmental structure and in Chronicles the Kingdom structure. What God established on Earth represents what the structures are that exist in heaven. Jesus taught us to pray that His will to be done on earth as in heaven. He established a temple in the Old Testament and then in the new testament revealed how this temple is now His people.
Below are examples of how the two kingdoms work:-
Kingdom of This World
Hate
My identity is in what I do and what other people say
I do what I want
I have to work hard to achieve what I want in life by myself
Institutions raise my children
Big temple/ church buildings
Eating, drinking. The physical
Kingdom of God
Love
My identity is in Christ
I do what God has made me do in a relationship with Him.
We seek the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to us.
The family is the structure God is using to raise sons through discipleship
Temple of God is His people
The spiritual. Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
We must see even the struggles and failures of this time with “Kingdom of God Eyes”, to recognise them as preparation for His new thing, way or wineskin in His kingdom. To also understand that what we see is not always the truth, but God is working in all things to achieve HIs plans and our job is to see this, pray his kingdom in and live a life of thanksgiving.
3. How is God establishing His new kingdom?
a. Families are the foundational structure of the Kingdom of God on earth.
We have had a massive attack on families. The latest Plebiscite was just the next step in this war Satan has against God’s new temple. God’s heart is for families, as we are established in families on earth, God also establishes us in a Kingdom Family in the Kingdom of God structure. God is establishing families to create a place where God dwells on earth, releases His glory and ministers to build up and mature people in their relationship with God and to equip them for the good works He has for them.
God is restoring Families through the Spirit and Power Of Elijah. In Malachi 4 we read:-
5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Malachi 4.
God is bringing the family together under the father. That is His promise. This restoration of sons to fathers is part of the family being restored to function as an apostolic company.
Restoring the Tabernacle ( Dynasty) of David.
The whole of Chronicles is a record of the Families of God and David's role in establishing God's Kingdom on earth. It records all the families that served Him and how He organized them in a kingdom structure under David.
1 Chronicles 11: 1 Then all Israel gathered themselves to David unto Hebron, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.
This was when all the people of Israel presented themselves to David as an apostolic father. They functioned as apostolic families under the guidance of an apostolic father to serve in the kingdom. David's Kingdom, for example, consisted of families that worked together, Even his army was made of families and each family only went out to war for a month a year.
5 In mercy the throne will be established;
And One will sit on it in truth, in the tabernacle of David,
Judging and seeking justice and hastening righteousness.” Isaiah 16:5
Satan hates families and wants to destroy them to their very foundation. We are seeing, though, God establishing His Kingdom on earth through them.
b. Strengthening Fathers to be Sons of God. (and Kings and Priests)
God has established a pattern in the way he established his disciples. Why didn’t Jesus call any women to be his 12 disciples? It could be that the 12 disciples he called were or would be Fathers and husbands and he knows that women and children thrive best under the care of a godly father or husband.
When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well he said “go and get your husband” she had no husband, but she went out and gathered the men.
28 The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, 29 Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? 30 Then they went out of the city and came unto him. John 4:28-30
Teaching the Fathers and connecting them to their Heavenly Father blesses everybody. The fathers then can go and teach, cover and establish their families in the new Kingdom. This new kingdom structure is a powerful way of bringing in the Kingdom of God into the world.
c. Focusing on healing the heart not on fixing the symptoms of brokenness. (Sin)
In the kingdom of the world, we focus on the symptoms. What is the hardest thing to do is know that when God brings healing He starts with the heart. Man looks at the outside but God looks at the heart.
In Isaiah 61 we read about the anointing of Jesus and how the Spirit equips him for His appointed mission. As we are filled with the same Spirit we have the same mission as Jesus. This is a very important passage in the Bible for us as disciples of Jesus.
John 16 v 8-11. The conviction of the Holy Spirit.
8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. John 16:8-11 (NKJV)
d. Dying to everything that hinders our walk as sons.
When we learn to have Kingdom eyes and walk in a different way, our desire is to seek the Kingdom of God over anything else. In Romans 6 Paul talks about the power of our flesh, and the need to die to our flesh so we can function as God intends as sons of God. If anything is stopping us from truly walking as sons; if anything is hindering us from achieving all God has for us then we are to stop doing it and change our lifestyles so we can be successful in the Kingdom of God. For example, if we watch TV then we are being programmed by the world’s thinking, the advertisements are brainwashing us and we are wasting time that could be spent being in God’s Word, talking to others about God, worshipping and growing as sons. Some things that we could be challenged by include: -
· TV and entertainment
· Books and magazines
· Food
· Debt
· Choice of friends
e. Intentionally growing as sons of God
When we understand the Kingdom of God, we are wanting to be fully established in this kingdom. This means that our lifestyle changes as our priorities change. We instead are intentional in our lifestyles and are no longer content in living as the world lives. Some examples of how we can change in our thinking include:
· Daily breaking bread, fellowship, prayers and the Apostolic Doctrine.
· Writing Bible studies and reading the Bible.
· Taking every opportunity to prepare so we can speak God’s Word wherever we go.
· Walking in the Spirit and following His lead. Daily seeking Him.
· Joining in with meeting with the Body of Christ and growing.
· Choosing daily to die to the flesh and being challenged to get rid of everything that hinders us.
· Living a life of thanksgiving.
Conclusion
God is bringing a fresh wave of His Holy Spirit that will change this earth. He is calling us to get rid of the old wineskins and to prepare for the new things that He has for His people. The old wineskins or structures will not be able to contain what God has for us. This new thing will be based on Kingdom structures that will totally change how the earth functions. God is teaching us about this kingdom, revealing how we need to see everything through Kingdom eyes and live set apart from the current culture. This paradigm shift in thinking will radically empower the church or ecclesia to live with passion, purpose and power. As God released Fathers back to the role He has given them we will see whole families both transformed and then equipped to powerfully minister the Kingdom message to all the earth. God is using families to grow sons in the earth and to release the knowledge of the glory of God throughout the Earth, to prepare the bride to be spotless ready for Jesus’ return and to establish the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.