The Kingdom & the New Covenant

When Jesus appeared on the scene nearly 2,000 years ago, He came on a mission from His Father to introduce a new covenant as prophesied by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:31-32: “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. The people had not kept the old covenant, and it was time to change the covenant's dynamics to give the people an opportunity to succeed. The people could not obey the entire law and consistently slipped into idolatry. Jesus would introduce a spiritual kingdom. From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17).

When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying, "Blessed are the poor [ptochos – helpless, cower like a beggar] in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"               Matthew 5:1-3 

Many scholars believe Jesus's first address to His disciples and a large multitude, right after choosing the twelve, occurred on a mountainside near Capernaum. It is commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount and lays the foundation for His entire public ministry. It begins with His identifying the poor in spirit, those who see themselves as helpless, humble, like beggars, having an accurate assessment of themselves. These are ones who receive the kingdom of heaven. These are those who understand the dynamics of the new covenant; they will succeed in the kingdom.

The Sermon continues with an emphasis on various conditions and characteristics, including those who mourn, those who are meek or gentle, those who are merciful, those who are pure in heart, and those who are peacemakers. These conditions represent attitudes of the heart that provide a healthy foundation for the new covenant believer. They are spiritual realities that are experienced through an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Righteousness 

In Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." The righteousness He speaks of is not derived from self or human accomplishment, but is spiritually derived from Jesus Christ. "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). The righteousness believers receive from Christ cannot be earned, but can only be received on the basis of faith, just like Abraham received it (Genesis 15:6). For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith (Romans 4:13). Jesus even promised that the one who is persecuted for the sake of that righteousness would receive the kingdom (Matthew 5:10), just as the poor in spirit in verse 3.

But seek [zeteo – strive to find] first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.                        Matthew 6:33

The two grand objects of this great Sermon are emphasized in the above verse: His kingdom and His righteousness. "The kingdom of God" is the primary subject of the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom which Jesus introduced in His first coming as life to be realized on the inside of each believer (Luke 17:21). When He returns, the kingdom of God will be established on the earth in a physical sense. Paul understood for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). For the present age, kingdom life is an inward, spiritual experience through the Holy Spirit, producing righteousness, peace, and joy. Paul perceived this relationship as: and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith (Philippians 3:9). Seeking first this quality of life is to prioritize the pursuit of the life of Christ and His righteousness by surrendering to His authority, including His Word, in every aspect of life. "All these things" refers to the necessities of life, including food, clothing, and shelter. Jesus promises that kingdom life provides for the believer’s basics. In Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”

Your Will Be Done

“Your kingdom [basileia – royal dominion] come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”                           Matthew 6:10

Prayer is the honest intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to Him. It presupposes a belief in the character and nature of God and His willingness to enter into discourse with His creation to accomplish and fulfill His divine purposes. It is beseeching the Lord for help, a pouring out of the soul before the Lord, seeking God's answers for particular situations and concerns. Prayer intends to glorify God's name and to ask for help to accomplish His will on earth. Prayer prepares each for the proper use of the answer.

In the midst of Jesus’s greatest sermon, this prayer is given as a model prayer. It is designed to express the manner in which the believer should pray, not the precise words or petitions which he is to use. The word kingdom here means royal dominion or rule. The petition is the expression of a wish that God may rule everywhere; that his laws may be obeyed and that the gospel of Christ may be advanced everywhere, until the world will be filled with His glory.

This particular prayer begins with an acknowledgment of who God is: He is Our Father, He resides in heaven, and He is holy, to be hallowed. Once this position is established in the believer’s mind, the emphasis is on God's kingdom and God's will. Robert Law has said, "Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting the will of man done in heaven, but for getting God's will done on earth." Desiring God's will over man's will means allowing God's kingdom to come and become a spiritual reality in the believer's life. 1 John 5:14-15 represents God’s kingdom in operation: This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

God wants His will to happen on earth as it now does in heaven. That reality will take place most fully when Christ sets up His kingdom on the earth after His second coming. Paul summarized God’s will for the believer in the current age in Titus 2:12-13, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, [sophronos – of sound mind] righteously [dikaios – conformable to God’s justice] and godly [eusebos – piety, devotion] in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. Not only should each believer deny ungodliness and worldly desires, he should also be led by a sound mind, be conformed to God’s justice, and devoted to His purposes, with an eye to the return of Christ. This only happens to the believer who operates on a spiritual plane, empowered by the Holy Spirit. According to 1 Thessalonians 4:3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. Knowing how to possess one’s vessel is to be led by the Spirit of the Lord, where there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Receiving a Kingdom

And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN." This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.                 Hebrews 12:26-29

The context of the above passage is the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant, to a brand new expression of the kingdom of God, as Hebrews 12:22 declares: But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. It is promised that the Lord will shake all created things so that only uncreated things will remain. This applies not only to the Kingdom Age, but also to a shaking taking place in the current age and the spiritual kingdom that governs it. It means that anything created by man apart from the leading of the Holy Spirit will be shaken. The kingdom received is completely governed by the Lord's will; anything else will be left behind. At the Rapture of the Church in 1 Corinthians 15:53-54, For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory.

Consider it all Joy

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. But the brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position; and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass; and its flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away.                          James 1:2-11

The letter of James was most likely written by the half-brother of Jesus, leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem, written around 58 AD – 60 AD, some 10-12 years before the destruction of Jerusalem. The Book of Acts attests to a time of great unrest within both the Christian and Jewish communities. The passage above from James 1 centers on the trials men face to build faith in God that produces endurance. This kind of faith is the signature of kingdom life since it creates a sense of lacking in nothing when the situation says otherwise. When the believer is secure in his position in Christ, he is willing to accept any circumstance he faces as purposeful from God's perspective. He can ask from God without any doubting since he is willing to accept any answer as perfect. Without this conviction, he becomes unstable in his ways as double-minded. James saw the key to the challenge as seeing himself in his heavenly, exalted position. The circumstances of the physical life are not any measure of God's view of the situation. The true believer has learned to view every situation from an eternal viewpoint, as the Scriptures declare.

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.               James 1:27

From James's perspective, true kingdom life includes two important elements: caring for those who are afflicted and in need, like orphans and widows, and not allowing the world system and all its tentacles to negatively influence the believer's perspective on his life and purpose in the world. A healthy separation from those influences produces a sense of holiness and a dedication or devotion to God's purposes. When he is confident of who he is in Christ, he will desire to honor Jesus with his life and be used to manifest that life through his concern for others.

Greater than John

This is the one about whom it is written, 'BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY BEFORE YOU.' I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." When all the people and the tax collectors heard this, they acknowledged God's justice, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves, not having been baptized by John.        Luke 7:27-30

Jesus paid John a great compliment by stating that no one was greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. Jesus was not saying John was not part of the kingdom of God, for John had been preaching the same message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus was saying that being a great prophet is not nearly so great as being a member of the kingdom. This implies that citizens of the kingdom have a distinct advantage over the prophets, who were seen as great men of God in the Old Testament. Citizens of the kingdom are under the new covenant and have the Law of God written on their hearts. They also have the indwelling Holy Spirit, empowering them to walk in a manner worthy of their calling to represent the kingdom on earth faithfully. Even the least person in the kingdom has a greater spiritual capacity than John the Baptist himself.