The kingdom of god: 1

What is the Kingdom of God and why does it matter that Christians understand it? (Spoiler alert – it matters a lot!!) These questions will set the frame for the following series of posts on the Kingdom of God. The scriptures talk a lot about the Kingdom of God. Throughout the Old Testaments, prophets, poets and Kings regularly spoke of God’s Kingdom and the eternal reign of God as the only true sovereign. Once Jesus arrived on the scene in the flesh and began his public ministry, he spoke of very little else – his main theme was ‘The Kingdom’.

Before Jesus came John the Baptist and his message was repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Mt 3:2). When Jesus began to preach, his message was exactly the same (Mt 4:17). In fact, in the ESV you can find the phrase ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ 31 times just in the gospel of Matthew! The kingdom isn’t just a major theme, it is the major theme – so much so that Matthew records Jesus saying that the Gospel that was to be proclaimed would be known as the Gospel of the Kingdom (Mt 24:14)

• Matthew 12:28 – Jesus said that if he was casting out demons by the power of God, it was evident that the Kingdom of God [had] come upon [them].
• Luke 10:9 – Jesus sent out the disciples, telling them to heal the sick and to say to them that the kingdom of God [had] come near to [them].
• Luke 17:21 – Jesus tells the crowd that the Kingdom of God is not a visible Kingdom but that the Kingdom was in the midst of [them].
• Matthew 13:19 – in Jesus parable of the sower, he explains to his disciples that the seed that was sown is not the word of God as many people assume, but Jesus said the seed that is sown is the word of the Kingdom (or word about the Kingdom, depending on your translation).
• John 3:3-5 – When speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus points out two incredibly important details about the Kingdom
  • Firstly, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless one is born again, and
  • Secondly, unless you’re born again you cannot enter the Kingdom.

The kingdom is the point

Clearly the writers of the Gospels, and more importantly Jesus himself, were majoring on the Kingdom of God, and Jesus stresses the point that not only is the Kingdom able to be near, upon or in the midst of us, but that the Kingdom ought to be entered into so that one might actually be able to see it. In the original Greek text, the word used for ‘see’ is the word eidon, which J.A Swanson’s Dictionary of Biblical Languages defines as to see, pay attention, understand, experience, learn about, perceive. Jesus point is that you cannot begin to understand, make sense of or experience the reality of the Kingdom of God until you have entered it – which requires you to be born again. From here we could take a left turn and dive into the doctrines of Salvation but we’ll save that for another series, suffice to say that one must be born again in order to begin to eidon, to see, the Kingdom of God, and that the reason Jesus came was to make that possible, so that we could be transplanted out of darkness and brought into the Kingdom of Light (Col 1:13).

Lets step back a little though and ask a few important questions before we proceed. Namely, what is a ‘kingdom’? whose kingdom is it? and why is it so important that we enter it and eidon it?

What is a Kingdom?

Naturally speaking , we know that a kingdom is a country, state or territory ruled by a King and/or Queen – or a monarch of some sort. It is an area under the jurisdiction of sovereign rule and governance. There is not a democracy, there is no senate or debating between politicians, there is simply the decrees and proclamations of the monarch that are the law of the land.

The etymology (history and study of words and their origins) of the word Kingdom is rather helpful here. It is made up of the word King, and the suffix -dom. This suffix ‘dom’ means ‘decree, judgment, statute’, all legal words, with statute being a word to describe an act or decree that is passed by a legislative body into a firm law. For example, in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, the King is tricked by his advisors into making a decree that no one may pray to anyone other than the King, knowing that Daniel prayed to his God every day. Once Daniel was caught praying to God, even the King could not go back on his word, it has become a statute and had to be enforced (Daniel 6).

So a Kingdom is where the laws and rule that govern a given district or nation, are created by the words of the King. As the King speaks, so the law becomes, this is why wise kings had many advisors!

Law of 1st mention

When studying the Bible, something scholars will use in order to help establish definitions and precedence is called the Law of First Mention. This has to do with the first time a specific word or idea is mentioned in the scriptures, that the meaning and context carries more weight in defining that word or idea than at other times later in scripture.

We know what a Kingdom is in the general history of the world, and we know how we view and define kingdoms, but how does God reveal the first human kingdom? how does scripture paint the kingdoms of men? The first mention of a kingdom in the Bible is in Genesis 10:8-10.

Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Nimrod was the first among men to be called a ‘mighty man’, he was, according to scripture, a mighty hunter and by speculation, a great warrior. The beginning of his kingdom, the first kingdom mentioned in the Bible, was at Babel. In Assyrian, pronounced ‘Bab-ili’, it means ‘gate of god’, but in Hebrew, it came to mean ‘confound’ or ‘confuse’, and it where God confused the language of the people building the great tower of Babel (Genesis 11).

Why does this first mention matter?

I’m glad you asked!

The tower of Babel was mankind’s attempt to make a name for themselves, to be as god and to ascend into the heavens and enthrone themselves as sovereign. Nimrod wanted to be more than a king among men, he wanted to become a god.

Genesis 11:4 – Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

God saw that if they continued then they would succeed in the goal, which would be bad for them as they would begin to believe that they do not need to belong to the heavenly Kingdom and stop searching for it. Worse still, they would be violating the existing laws of God but rejecting him as their one true King. So God interrupted their building program, confused their language and scattered them all over the earth.

Genesis 11:7-9 – Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Here we find that the very first Kingdom mentioned in the Bible was established by the very first ‘might man’ mentioned in the Bible, and that the goal of this venture was to make a name for themselves by building a tower that would be a gate of god. See anything wrong here? God did. So he confused their language and put an end to it, dispersing the people (is it any wonder we see various pyramids and towers of similar design all over the world? But thats another post). Instead of being submitted to the King of heaven, mankind wanted to build their own kingdom and become their own gods.

This is and always has been the devils game plan; to try and get humans to reject the ruling word of the king of heaven and become our own kings by saying for ourselves what we shall do

Every earthly kingdom, every attempt to rule our own nations or even our own lives, is to embrace the spirit of Nimrod and attempt to be our own god, building a tower of success, fame, fortune, wealth, health or whatever we think makes us better and in charge. Adam and Eve rejected the word of the King in the garden and the devil has been hard at work to get humanity to reject the Kingdom of God ever since.

This is why the coming of God’s Kingdom is such a big deal and such a major focus of Jesus ministry. It’s the coming of the Kingdom that will overturn and upend every other ruler and principality in the spiritual realms. It’s the coming of a Kingdom that seeks to liberate and set free all who are enslaved to the snares of the devil,

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

1 John 3:8

But the Kingdom of God is not merely a kingdom of some earthly region or territory; it is the Kingdom of Heaven! A spiritual kingdom, a kingdom that can be upon you, in your midst, near you, and must be entered into and experienced. A kingdom that Jesus said he came to announce and provide access to for all who lost, broken, hurting, and in need of a savior. A kingdom that would break bondages, restore honor, trade ashes for beauty set at liberty those who were oppressed and downtrodden, and lead them into Paradise.

Before we can look further into this exit from darkness and sin and an entrance into the Kingdom and the promise of paradise, we will need to go back to the garden which will be the theme of the next post.