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God has given us desires, we need to know how to use these desires properly, but the desires themselves are from God. The problem with these desires is that the devil takes these desires and perverts it.
God’s righteous rule is just, and kind, and good, and right. The problem is that the gospel is presented a lot of times as a “save me” gospel. Salvation isn’t an end in and of itself, it is a beginning.
God’s Kingdom here on earth is to be a little colony of heaven on earth that demonstrates how God originally designed the world to be. This is why we don’t believe in exercising coercion over people.
So, what is the Kingdom? The sphere where God’s authority rules. When Jesus is Lord of your life, he will not take advantage of you. He rules on a different level.
Ephesians 1:15-23 – This is to be the result, that they would know what the hope of their calling was. What the riches of the glory of your inheritance is. The church is God’s inheritance, when He looks at our Church, he sees his inheritance.
We stop with personal salvation. God needs to salvage our life. There is an ongoing work of redemption that God is doing.
Deuteronomy 4:6-8 – Salvation is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
Deuteronomy 28:14 – Keep God’s law, don’t veer to the right or the left. The law of the Lord is perfect.
If our purpose is to always have things worked out, we’ll see a much better version of the church. Many people leave churches because they are disillusioned with churches that are not working towards this purpose.
Acts 19:39-41 – The term here is “ecclesia” which literally means, called out to govern, to bring God’s government to the earth and demonstrate how people are to relate to God’s rule.
What about the Kingdom of God and man? Every man is hardwired with the basic ideals of the Kingdom. We were made for the Kingdom, we were not made to be selfish and to focus here, but to focus on Christ’s Kingdom and bring it to bear on the earth.
Humanism describes man’s capacities, but they cannot be realized until selfishness is taken care of. Communism projects the ideal society, but it doesn’t happen because selfishness is always a problem.
Scriptures mentioned – Matthew, Luke, John