They Believed In The Kingdom Of God

It’s comforting to me to know that the disciples didn’t always have it figured out for I know there are times when I too can thick headed, I think I’ve got the whole thing figured out then the Holy Spirit reveals something else to me that I had never seen before.

Jesus didn’t make a joke out of it, he didn’t criticize them, or rebuke them for not understanding. He simple said, boys, it’s not for you to know the time of the coming of my kingdom, that’s not important right now, I have a more important task at hand for you. I want you to build my kingdom.

Against this background I want us to notice what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God.

8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."

1. It is a Spiritual Kingdom.

when the Holy Spirit has come upon you

Notice Jesus didn’t say I want to build a spiritual kingdom. What he said in essence is I want to build a Holy Spirit kingdom. Our faith is a faith built on things we cannot see. We believe in the Holy Spirit but we cannot see Him. We believe in eternal life but we cannot see it. We believe in salvation, justification, sanctification, and glorification but we cannot see these things.

There are a lot of people in the church today who believes in these spiritual things but they are not important to them because they can’t see them, hear them, feel them, or taste them; and well honestly, if you can’t see it it must not be that important. Yet the Bible says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen {Hebrews 11:1}

The very first reason God indwells us with His Holy Spirit is that through us He might build His kingdom. Yes, it is true that you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, we are sealed unto the day redemption by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us strength and courage, He is our helper and our comforter, He reveals all things of Jesus to us. But the first and most important reason that you and I are indwelt with Holy Spirit is that we might be kingdom builders. The kingdom we are called to build is an invisible kingdom but it is also an eternal kingdom that will never pass away.

We have been called and commisoned, indwelt and infilled, to build on things eternal. To many this concept of kingdom building may not be important, but to me it’s the only reason the church exists on earth and it’s the number one reason each of us have the Holy Spirit living in us.

2. It is a Powerful Kingdom.

8 but you will receive power

When Luke uses the word power it comes from a greek word dynimis. It’s where we get the word dynamite.

In the 1800’s a chemist by the name of Alfred Bernhard Nobel made a discovery that in turn made him very rich. He had discovered a power that was greater than anything the world had ever known. He asked a friend of his what was a word in the greek for explosive power and his friend said it was the word dynimis. Form that Nobel begin to call his discovery dynamite, a power greater than the world had ever known.