Lesson 3
Where is the Kingdom of Heaven?
The Kingdom of Heaven is Here
Listen! God is closer than breathing. Do you want to find God? Do you want to reach Him? You just need to look in here, because He is inside of you. You just need to look over there, because He is inside of everybody else who knows Him. You just need to look anywhere, because God is everywhere! So where is the heavenly realm? The heavenly realm is right here.
What did Jesus preach as He came down, as He went out to begin His ministry? "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Where? Just look right here! Here it is. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The Scriptures say concerning Jesus (Jesus Himself said this in John 1:18. Speaking about Himself He said), "No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father has declared it." "…who is in the bosom of the Father." Hang on, where was Jesus? He was down here on the earth was He not? He spoke those words. He said, "The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father …" Jesus was down on the earth, and at the same time He was in the bosom of the Father. How could that be? Let me show you another one.
The Scripture says in Ephesians 2:4-6, "But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sin, has made us alive together in Christ, and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
Now the kingdom of God is within us. Right now.
In Two Places
You are seated in heavenly places right now if you are a child of God in Christ. You are seated on the throne of heaven, looking down (if it is up there). Do you feel like it? Have I got you confused yet? Have I got your mind ticking yet? You see, God has made man to have three parts to his being - a spirit and a soul and a body. But you see, as man you have a part of you that came from God and has the same nature as God. It is your spirit, and a spirit has access to the realm of the Spirit.
Your spirit has contact with heaven. And your spirit is living in a physical body, which has contact with the earth. That is what Jesus was talking about when He said, "…the Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father." Jesus was physically on the earth, but His spirit was in union with Father God at the same time. What you do not realize is that you are already walking in the heavenly realm.
From the moment that you were born again and accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you gained an entrance into the realm of God. That means that your spirit is in touch with the place that the blessings come from. Your spirit is in touch with the Holy Spirit. Your spirit is in touch with the heavenly realm of God twenty four hours a day. The Holy Spirit and God are communing and communicating with your spirit twenty four hours a day.
You say, "Well I wish I could hear from the Lord."
He is talking. Listen! He is talking all the time. You are just too deaf to hear Him. Oh, it is getting into heavy stuff, you know, isn’t it, way out? We are still in the Word. What I am saying is totally scriptural.
Jesus, the Key to Blessings
Paul says that we are blessed ‘in Christ’. When God made man He gave the blessing. He created this earth and He put His man Adam upon this earth and said, "Adam, I will keep control of the universe and of the solar system and of everything that is involved. But what takes place in and upon the earth is your responsibility. I’m giving it to you. You are in charge."
Jesus came as the last Adam. Jesus was born of a virgin, which means that He was born without the taint of sin and He came upon the earth in the same condition that Adam did. We will look at this also in a lot of detail. Jesus came as the seed of Abraham with whom God had entered into Covenant and given all the blessings. We saw it there. "God had blessed Abraham in everything." Jesus entered into Blood Covenant with Almighty God and He shed His own blood in the Covenant. And Jesus entered into a permanent Covenant as man with God. Man and God became one in Christ.
The Scripture says that, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." Jesus bought back what Adam had lost. Jesus restored the relationship between man and God, which was lost in the Garden of Eden when man fell. Jesus brought us back to that place of blessing, the place of being in Covenant with somebody who has everything. And when you are in Covenant with someone, everything they have belongs to you. Jesus entered into Covenant with Almighty God and as we come in to him; as we become part of Him, the Scripture says that we as believers are members of the Body of Christ.
Now I do not care how humble a part of the Body you are. I don’t care if you are the smallest cell on the bottom of the soul of the foot of the Body of Christ, you are still part of the body, and you are still in Christ. And if you are in Christ you are in Covenant in Him with Almighty God, and everything that God has you have a right to have also. We have already seen that He has all the blessings, so we have a right, in Christ, to those blessings.
Bless Him Back
Now what is to be our response to all of this, when you realize all that He's given us?
"Oh, it makes me want to go out and live like the Devil, it really does."
Is that what it does to you? No! When I realize all that He has done for me; when I realize all that He has given me; when I realize all that is available to me in Him; when I realize how much He has blessed me, you know what I want to do? I want to bless Him back. I want to bless Him back, and I want to give Him everything that I have.
How are you going to bless Him? By saying, "Well God doesn’t want you to be blessed. He provides your needs and not your greeds."
That really blesses the Lord doesn't it? No, how can that bless the Lord? I tell you what blesses me. When I give a gift to somebody, and see the look of gratitude and the joy and the excitement on their face. When they come and throw their arms around me and hug me and say, "Man I appreciate that. Thank you!"
That is all the Lord requires of us. I think no person could be more insulted than if they gave somebody a costly gift, to have the person to pull out their wallet and say, "How much do I owe you?"
But people are trying to do that. They are trying to earn God’s blessings. They are trying to work for His blessings. They are trying to say, "Well, I’m unworthy of His blessings." They are trying to say, "Well maybe it’s not God’s will for me to be blessed at this time. Maybe it’s not God’s will for me to be healed. Maybe God wants me to remain sick to teach me something."
Oh, I do that to my son all the time. I hurt him like mad to teach him something! When he falls and hurts himself and comes crying to me with blood running down from his knee, I say, "Yeah, I want you to stay like that and suffer for a while so that you can learn not to do that in the future." I am not even that bad a parent, but we want to say that God is that kind of parent?
God the Source of Blessing
God is the source of all blessing. James, in his Epistle tells us, "Every good and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation nor shadow of turning." Every good and every perfect gift.
Listen, a curse is not a good gift. A curse is not a perfect gift. And sickness and disease, and poverty and suffering, humiliation and loneliness, despair, depression and discouragement are not gifts from Almighty God! They are a curse! And He has redeemed us from the curse, that the blessing of Abraham might come on us.
Well what kind of blessing did Abraham have? God had blessed Abraham in all things. He wants us to be blessed, that is why He gave us in Christ Jesus by His Holy Spirit, every blessing that we will ever need. All we need to do is to reach out in faith and in gratitude to Him, and take those gifts of His love.
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