The Kingdom Of God For Dummies Part 1 Series

Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…

Rev 21:5 He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

This is the biblical and true version of the New World Order or New Age you may have heard of. The profit Daniel makes mention of the establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth.

Dan 2:44-45 In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a Kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those Kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.

The Pharisees were looking forward to this time because they were expecting a political overthrow of Rome and the exultation of themselves to a position of power. They had some serious misunderstanding of the Kingdom of God, so Jesus corrects them when they questioned him about the Kingdom, and after correcting them he gives some instructions to his disciples regarding the Kingdom of God. With that said, let’s get to the first characteristic of the Kingdom of God that we will discuss today.

Read Luke 17:20, 21

1. The Kingdom of God is present today.

This is the main point of these two verses. The authority, power, and purposes of God are today being fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Let me explain. The Pharisees were carefully watching world and political events of the day, and searching the Scriptures, so that they would know when the Kingdom of God would come. The problem was that they were expecting a political/geographical that could be observed and pointed to in the same way as we could point and say, "There is the United Kingdom." Jesus corrects them by saying, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, "Here it is" or "There it is. . . " In other words, the Kingdom of God is not a specific location that people can point to.

Jesus goes on to say, "The Kingdom of God is within you." Most other translations of the Bible translate these last two words as "among you" or "in your midst." This is a way of saying that the Kingdom of God you are looking to come has already arrived and is among your or right in your presence. It is most likely that this is a better translation, since Jesus could not have been saying that the Kingdom of God was in the Pharisees’ hearts. In addition to this, Kingdom of God’s current presence among the people was a main theme in the Gospel of Luke, which makes it more likely that this is Jesus emphasis here.

1. The Kingdom of God is present today

The Kingdom of God is present because Jesus the King of the Kingdom is present and he was exercising the authority, and manifesting the purposes of the Kingdom of God. Many Scriptures point out the current presence of the Kingdom of God.

Luke 11:20 But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the Kingdom of God has come to you.

Luke 16:16-17 The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the Kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.