Eternity 106 - The Kingdom Of Heaven In The Heart Of Believers
(Matthew 5:8 NKJV) Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
(Isaiah 57:15 NKJV) For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, With him who has a contrite and humble spirit, To revive the spirit of the humble, And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
(Hebrews 8:10-12 NKJV) "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. {11} "None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. {12} "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."
God dwells in two places - in the throne room of Heaven and in the hearts
of the humble and contrite believers. (Isaiah 57:15) The heart is the first
place that the law of God is written, (Hebrews 8:10-12) agreed with and
obeyed. <i>(Romans 6:17-18 NKJV) But God be thanked that though you
were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
to which you were delivered. {18} And having been set free from sin, you
became slaves of righteousness.</i>
Obeying from the heart ends hypocrisy and the "external faith"
of rules and regulations and human appearances. Obeying from the heart means
having a sincere and truthful love for one another out of the fear of God.
<i>(1 Peter 1:22 NKJV) Since you have purified your souls in obeying
the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another
fervently with a pure heart,</i>
The Kingdom arrives first in hearts that believe in Jesus Christ, love righteousness
and long for heaven. In hearts which are committed to loving one another
"from the heart".
The Kingdom is thus not a ritual or a structure but a place where human
hearts are aligned with God and are full of love, joy ad peace. Imagine
iron filings being aligned by a magnet. That is how human hearts are aligned
to God through faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Its a spiritual
tuning of the inner beings of believers to the will of God.
Something has changed since Jeremiah's assessment of the human heart as
deceitful and wicked. A redemption has taken place, a cleansing has occurred,
a death and resurrection has been undergone, a new covenant has been made
and the law has been written on our hearts and we now know God and Christ
dwells in our hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:17). Thus deep in the heart
of every believer is a high and holy place filled with the Spirit where
Christ dwells and where the Kingdom of the Heavens is established and can
break forth from.
The Kingdom comes into the human heart by faith and flows out from the human
heart through works done in love. Thus Christians do not work "up to"
a standard, in order to gain approval but "out from" an inner
being filled with God, to express the love that God has placed within them.The
Kingdom arrives within me through the Holy Spirit, the promised gift of
God, and as the Kingdom arrives within me it is expressed in my life. I
do not try to create the Kingdom of God by human effort and construction.
Its already there, inside me, in my heart. I can enter the Kingdom, and
I can inherit the Kingdom and its blessings but I cannot construct it. Its
a perfect eternal work of God and I cannot ever construct something perfect
and eternal from my own wisdom.
The Kingdom is thus not a strained and difficult obedience to an external
standard. It is not something that is elusive and which I have to make happen
by being a perfect person and leading the perfect church and getting everything
just right. The Kingdom does not come as a reward for legalistic living.
And it doesn't come through intense communal living. I used to think that
if we have revival and then, maybe we will have a Christian community and
if we work really hard we might get a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. That
is not the case. The Kingdom is already here, its already at hand, it has
already turned up in the faith and love that God has placed in the hearts
of those who believe. As we simply, humbly, live out from that faith and
love inside us the manifestation of the Kingdom arrives.
The perfect is both "out there" and "in here". The perfect
is in the throne room of heaven and in the hearts of Christians. The pure
in heart will see God. (Matthew 5:8) The contrite in heart are indwelt by
God. (Isaiah 57:15). And if we abide in Him, then He abides in us, makes
His home in is, and dwells with us. And surely that is the Kingdom of Heaven,
to be where God is dwelling. And He dwells in believers. There is something
absolutely perfect deep down in every Christian, that perfection is Christ
in you the hope of glory. Your heart is the base camp for the Kingdom of
God and from that base camp the Kingdom can come in power and the gospel
can be preached to all creation.
Thus Christianity is an inside out faith. Christianity proceeds out to the
world from the inside of the saint, from Christ in them, from the treasure
in earthen vessels. In our flesh dwells no good thing but in our heart dwells
Christ. You are not a useless wretch having to live up to high and holy
laws written on tablets of stone by an unyielding God. You are a Christ
indwelt saint, with the law of God written on your heart, and from your
heart can come love and joy and peace and all the good righteous things
that accompany the gospel of God. The Kingdom is both in heaven and in the
contrite hearts of believers.Your Christ-indwelt heart is the base camp
for the Kingdom of God.