There Is A Kingdom

When Jesus said, "Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He was referring to Himself. God is no longer distant. God is no longer a pillar of cloud or a column of fire. God is now in the flesh among you, His glory being revealed day by day. But then it gets even better. We move to Romans chapter 8, verse 11, and we find this: God indwells His people as the Holy Spirit's power indwells. Read this: If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. I don't want you to miss the beauty of this 'D.' Where does God dwell? He dwells within you. The very power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. Sadly, too many Christians don't tap into that power. It's as though we have a house rigged with electricity. The light bulbs are on, all the neighbors stand around to see this electric work, the sun goes down, we flick the lights on for a minute, and then we turn them off, and the candles come on. That's how many of us live our lives. We're rigged up for the power, but we're still living by candle light. That's not what God intended. We're going to get into this fact here at a moment: that what He intends for us is to live in power because His power indwells us. Understand this, that the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power available to you to deal with the problems of life, but some of us play anemic and small. We're not convinced that the power is really there, and yet that was the good news. Jesus said, "I'm going to leave, and the Comforter is coming." We're going to get into another verse here in a minute that when He comes, you're going to receive power. Are we living in power? The second 'D' we want to look at is there is a dynasty with the Kingdom of God. So the Kingdom of God, number one, is defined by power. Let me leave us with one last point here on that power topic before we move on to dynasty. I mean, a lot of people who have read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and they understand the power of Jesus, you know those people, they get on Facebook and say, "I need prayers and fuzzy worms and good vibes and positive energy because I'm going through a crisis." They've had a little taste of who Jesus really is. However, they've come to church and been very disappointed to see that people who claim Jesus don't live in the power of Jesus, and so they move on. "I'll just commune with God out in nature; I'll go do my God thing somewhere else." Are we the representation we need to be as His people?

So the next point is the dynasty. It begins in Genesis chapter 17, verses 7 and 8. This is the Abrahamic covenant. God tells Abraham, "I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." Here's the cool thing for those of us who are followers of Christ: What Scripture tells us is we've been grafted into the covenant. And I don't know about you, but I'm really happy about that because, hey, I wasn't born in Israel. My parents weren't Jewish; they were Baptist. And there's a lot of other reasons I should be disqualified. So praise God that the covenant we've been grafted into, that is His people, "You weren't born in My kingdom, but I am making you subjects of the kingdom." Praise God for that.