…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

At my church recently, they have been doing a sermon series on the “Kingdom of Heaven” which has been interesting…it got me thinking; if it’s hard to think about the name of God (whose name we can’t even pronounce) and to try to understand that…its going to be really hard to understand the Kingdom of Heaven as to how God wants to implement it. Let me explain. Take a look at the Genesis account where He began creation with a man and a woman. They are in the garden, beautiful, serene and there is nothing more they could ever need or want. Before the fall, it seems that God wanted to walk with Adam and Eve and be close to them. For now, there is a harmony between man and God. In His creation, God created man originally good – God was pleased to not only have formed man, but to be in relationship with him.

Now continuing on into Exodus, you see where God wants to still be with His people. Chapter 25 talks about how God gives the construction plans to Moses about how to build the tabernacle (in modern construction, this would be a ranch home…I crack myself up.) This wasn’t for God to live in, but rather to dwell among His people. Amazingly strange isn’t it? As we know of God, or at least what we can know, He is infinite, almighty and beyond what is there…yet He wants to dwell among His people. He just wants to hang with us! It’s amazing to think about that you and I and the person who lives next door to us – God wants to be with each one of us – to dwell in our midst. This may have been a reminder that God didn’t need a place to rest his head, but rather the Israelites needed a place for God to dwell among them to remind them that He is still there…a God who is there, with them!

Then what happens is amazing as well. You take a look in John 1 and it says this: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Not only did God want to become closer – He did it in a way that no one expected, a baby who grew to be a man, but then made his dwelling among us. Throughout eternity, God had this longing to be with us…down here. On earth. In the Flesh. Now, here is the rub (as Shakespeare would say): When the Bible says, “…and they shall call him Immanuel, – which means, ‘God with us.'” – I don’t believe what the author was trying to say is that “God is with our particular brand of religion.” God is not proclaiming membership within any of the religions that were created here on earth. It cannot mean that he has devolved into church membership with any one church, belief system or theology…make sense? If we limit him like that then we are choosing for ourselves a god who is too small and not the God of the bible. (btw: when you create god in your own image, you are already breaking commandment #1 – you have been warned.)

So Jesus as God – comes among us and dwells with us…what is one of the first things he starts to do with the people? He touches them. He heals them. Can God not get close enough? And its not like he goes to the spiritual elite of the day and gives them blessing and healing – no…he goes to the ones who haven’t got it together, who have been dismissed, judged and deemed as sinners. These are the ones who Jesus tells ‘…you are blessed…theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ He didn’t say on the way up to the clouds or when you become not-sinners, but rather ‘this kingdom of heaven thing is yours…now!…take it!’ The Pharisees thought that it was much different and a much more difficult road than that to travel.

They were the ones teaching that purity and righteousness were given to them from others who had already attained it and it was passed on because you met some criteria or some ‘work’ may have been achieved. For most of the people, it was way out of reach. The Torah teachers and the rabbi’s of their time had placed righteousness and basically the kingdom of heaven out of reach for anyone to go through. They were basically saying, “repent and cleanup your act – until then, you are an outcast.” You can imagine the despair and discouragement of the people who tried to come close but were stopped short because of their income level, intelligence, clothes, …well, externalities as well as family backgrounds, people you hung around with or maybe it was just that you weren’t friends with the right people.

Maybe its that reason why Jesus said to them, “…You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” I love Jesus. Most of the pharisees as you will read in the gospel accounts take sin as something that travels from the impure to the pure. And if you caught this impurity, you must cleanse yourself to the nth degree. Jesus, however, reverses this. For him, he wasn’t made unclean by being with and touching the people who were the ‘left-out and sinners’ – but as they experienced, they were made righteous, pure, healed and restored because of their relationship with him. Pretty cool, huh?

So not only did He come among us – but he would say things like, “…may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What can we make of this? Jesus tells us that things are done a certain way in heaven…God’s way. Who else would know this except Jesus, right? So, to our understanding, there is an way of doing things in heaven and when we do God’s will here on earth as he desires us to do in complete obedience…what are we doing? We are doing things as they are done in heaven. Let that sink in for a second…

If I am doing what God wants me to do, here on earth, that are in line with his will, in complete obedience to him – then I am bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Sound strange? Of course…since we have this belief that there will come a day when all will be burned away and what is left is us floating in the clouds somewhere with God somewhere….out there…right? We have been taught somewhere that kingdom of heaven is an ‘out there’ thing and that we only get to experience the kingdom of heaven we have left…earth? Have we not even said this ourselves? We ask people who don’t believe the question like this: you want to know how to get to heaven?

…but wait, what is it that we just read above – God wants to dwell with His people – God with us – on earth as it is in Heaven? If we believe that God wants to dwell among us – that means there is some responsibility on my part. Woah! Which makes me think – am I creating a place…am I part of something, church for instance, where I am preparing a place for God to come down. We see it Genesis, He wants to walk with us. In Exodus, we wants to dwell among His people. Again, in the New Testament – He becomes flesh and blood to walk among us – so that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Has anything changed since that time? God is still determined to come down and live among us.

So shouldn’t the question, the Jesus question, be: want to know how to get heaven, here?

So, …how do I get heaven, here? More to come…