February 19, 2024 • 26 mins
In the captivating episode of our Insurgence series, we dive into the deep and compelling metaphor of spiritual vision from a Christian perspective. We explore the profound truths hidden within gospel passages and Jesus's depiction of the Kingdom of God as an unseen reality present in believers' lives.
Pastor Dan's message sheds light on the intriguing concept of spiritual vision and its similarities to physical blindness and the experience of newborn babies whose vision gradually sharpens. We delve into the effects of spiritual enlightenment after rebirth in Christ and its transformative impact on our perception, as if we were wearing spiritual reality goggles.
Understand the Judeo-Christian concept of Christ's Kingdom, an existing but distinctive reality. Learn about the widespread spiritual impairment and it's reflection of God's Kingdom. Engage in debunking theories such as simulation theory while emphasizing the necessity of commitment over interpretations that fail to account for God's undeniable presence.
We unfold the concept of 'redemption' where, being reborn Christians, we experience life in a world created by God but damaged by sin. As Christians, we are on a journey towards the complete realization of God's Kingdom, living in an 'already but not yet' state where the full realization of Christ's Kingdom is eagerly anticipated.
The episode also points out the misguided efforts of those who attempt to hasten the coming of God's Kingdom, resulting in distrust and conflict. We further discuss the effects of 'legalism', encouraging personal spiritual growth and mutual grace over forced conformity.
We conclude the episode with unique insights from Christian author Frank on 'fearing the Lord,' putting forth an alternate perspective on divine submission and surrendering to God's love and safety.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:08):
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come,
Jesus answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed,
nor will they say, look, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
(00:28):
Let's just read it again. It's just two verses.
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom.
(00:50):
So in that spirit, reflecting on that opening song, for example,
I want to ask you to think about something just very quickly here.
I want you to imagine that you're walking through a very familiar room in your house in the dark.
I just did it yesterday. I was walking in the bedroom in the dark.
And for the most part, I found my way around comfortably, although it was an
(01:15):
uncomfortable comfort.
You know what I mean. You know what's there and you're afraid of tripping over
it or skinning your knee on it or something.
And so even though you're familiar with what you can't see, you are nevertheless
living dangerously, walking in the dark.
And so you have this familiarity with the room or the space,
(01:37):
but because it's dark, you're still a little cautious.
And that's basically what it's like for Christian believers navigating the kingdom
of Christ, albeit a negative image.
Now, what I mean by that is something people over a certain age will understand
and under a certain age don't grasp.
(01:57):
Back in the old days, we took pictures with cameras that used film.
And when your film was produced, you got a package of prints and you also got
a package of the negatives or actually the exposed film from your camera.
And what you you saw on the film from your camera was this weird reversal of light and darkness.
(02:23):
That's what we mean when we talk about a negative image in this context,
that the negative image is a reality that was captured on the film,
but its capturing of light and darkness is reversed. Right.
Now, in the same way, Christians view the world of the flesh and the kingdom of Christ.
(02:47):
We see this weird reversal of darkness and light, and it is present in a way
that is a distorted perception of things for us as Christian believers.
It's because we've been born again. again
it's because we have
(03:08):
a whole new sense of reality when we're
born again and it's a spiritual vision that we have attained as a gift of christ
jesus said you can't see the kingdom without this rebirth and it's not something
that you can earn or comes to you in a spiritual sort bright light.
(03:30):
It's actually just an inheritance that you receive, not to say just as though
it's a limited thing, but it's not as though you earned it or had some particularly conscious.
Awareness of having it transferred to you.
It's simply what happens when you're born again.
(03:51):
Now, we'll come back to that image in a minute, but what we really want to absorb
is the fact that that having been born again,
we're like newborn babies whose eyes take several months to really develop focus.
And in that time of focus, everything is somewhat blurry and distances are difficult to perceive.
(04:16):
Reflect for a minute on what real literal physical blindness is like.
In the 2020 census, it reported that more than 1.6 million Americans have some
form of vision impairment or blindness.
And what I gathered from that data is that describing the majority of blind
individuals worldwide as visually impaired is more fitting because most retain some sense of sight.
(04:46):
Most have some vision. It's just so limited that it's not functionally useful to them.
And this is a better description of what blindness is for many, many people.
Some do certainly live in total darkness. so
with that in mind we can draw
a parallel of our spiritual of the
(05:07):
spiritual impairment of the unbeliever they navigate
the world with this sort of spiritual blindness that
leaves everything in a state of grayness and fuzziness they look at the world
through this view of the gray twilight and because it's so natural to them they
don't know any better they were born that way And so the world seems perfectly natural to them,
(05:34):
albeit in this gray, visually impaired,
spiritually speaking, interpretation.
So what's a Christian believer then? Well, when a Christian believer is born again,
they're no longer spiritually, visually impaired, though it does take time for
(05:55):
the spiritual vision to clarify.
Clarify, again, referring to that understanding of what a newborn's vision is like.
If you're a newborn Christian, then it takes time for you to develop the sharpness
and clarity that comes with time.
I hear that I had such vision once upon a time, but it's long gone now.
(06:17):
But fortunately, that's the physical eyes I'm talking about.
What I do appreciate is that at this point in my life, my spiritual vision is
sharper than it's ever been.
And as born-again believers, you too could say that.
What God has done for us is to give us a sort of set of spiritual virtual reality goggles.
(06:39):
The kids gave me, or actually Laura gave me a set of VR goggles for a Christmas
present a couple of years ago.
My sister, the sister is, she's a nun, is a techie, like beyond,
it's crazy how much she loves her technology. and she decided it was time for her to upgrade.
(07:00):
And so I got hand-me-ups from my baby sister.
And I really enjoy those things. I mean, I really didn't know what I would think of them.
And I was very eager to try it before I buy it because I didn't even think I'd like it that much.
But it turns out that when you wear these things, you really are immersed in
(07:21):
a world that is vast, even though it's all confined to this device you're wearing over your eyes.
And you know that analogy I used about the room that you walk through in the dark.
Well, the truth is when I'm wearing these, I'm in a room that I can no longer
see because I'm wearing these goggles.
(07:42):
And I'm in a world that is very immersive and diverse and unique.
And yet I still have to be careful as I'm moving around my room lest I trip
over something or bounce off of a wall or something like that.
Because it turns out that the world of my flesh is still right there.
It's just that I can't see it anymore because I'm immersed in these goggles
(08:05):
and the world that they have put before my eyes and given my brain to perceive.
And so I'm literally drawing a parallel between that experience and the experience
of the born-again believer.
You have a perception of reality.
That is natural and normal to you, but then you have new eyes to see worlds
(08:27):
beyond your imagination.
And this is like the Lord giving the born-again believer new sight.
But as born-again believers, we become
more and more immersed in the world that is
now available to us and the vision of things that is informed by the Holy Spirit
so that we can easily collide with the world of the flesh that's just outside
(08:54):
of our new normal perception.
So the longer you walk with Christ and the more you are born again and then
maturing in the Spirit of Christ,
the more likely it is that your immersion in His kingdom will will cause you
to bounce off the walls of the world and the people who are moving through the
(09:15):
gray twilight that is the reality before new birth in Christ.
This is a wonderful place to be, but it's a dangerous place to be.
It's scary because there's pain.
There's pain when you collide with people who can't see what you see.
(09:37):
There's pain when you bounce off of painfully sharp and ragged edges that still
exist in the gray world around you.
This is why Jesus often says that the world that makes sense to us now still
doesn't make sense to those who are of the world.
(09:58):
That's why they hate him and will hate you because you love him.
Now, just for the sake of those who are like me, sort of fascinated with the
intellectual and sort of temporal scientific view of things,
we talk about this reality of the kingdom of Christ and entering into that kingdom
(10:21):
as a metaphor, but it isn't a metaphor. It's a reality.
It is the way things really are. and while
I mentioned living with this tension
between the world of the flesh that is so
familiar to us and to most of the people we
know in fact if I were to use the same statistic that I shared with you about
(10:45):
physical blindness I could tell you in quite general and honest terms that the
The vast majority of people in the world have a spiritual,
physical, and spiritual—that's not coming out the way I meant it.
They have a spiritual impairment.
(11:06):
The census might have told us that there are 1.6 million people who are visually
impaired physically, but in reality, spiritual impairment is off the charts.
That's what I really wanted you to hear. People who are spiritually impaired
with their vision of the kingdom are everywhere.
(11:28):
They're everywhere. They may be us.
In fact, it's fair to say that in this interpretation of the reality that is the kingdom of God,
the Bible gives us a clear understanding that we will never see entirely as
well as we can or will as God intends it until we're physically born again or
(11:54):
resurrected in our return to the presence of Christ.
And so this Judeo-Christian understanding then
gives us a picture of the reality
of things and the reality of Christ's kingdom being co-existent and yet separate
(12:15):
in a way that won't change until Christ returns and completely does away with the world of the flesh.
So what does that mean? Well, some people have interpreted that to mean something
like the movie The Matrix.
Some of you are old enough to remember The Matrix series of movies,
which suggests something called simulation theory.
(12:39):
And some of us might think that the kingdom of God is a simulation or that we're
living in a simulation that is generated from the kingdom of God.
But this is a theory that really doesn't hold up in Scripture.
But it's one way that people have tried to interpret Scripture that doesn't
require you to make a commitment.
(13:03):
And that's the problem. Whenever we try to make a theory within our religious
systems that gives us a plausible understanding of how things work in the world
of the kingdom of Christ—.
Basically leaves us challenged to explain things that only God can explain.
So simulation theory proponents will naturally assert that God's reality is
(13:32):
outside of our perception, but that's not true.
The Bible tells us explicitly that God created this world, this place that for
now is is grayer than it ought to be, and fuzzier than it ought to be,
and not as it once was in Eden.
(13:52):
And that this reality is real, but we are no longer citizens of this world,
and therefore, as citizens of the kingdom of Christ after being born again,
our vision and our senses have been attuned
to something that has not yet come into fullness of expression on the planet
(14:14):
in the universe in other words eden vision eden hearing eden smell and taste and touch.
Therefore we are living with something that some scholars refer to as the already but not yet,
(14:35):
which is originally a Jewish concept, but it finally, it fits pretty well with
the Christian interpretation, and it does, it seems,
express an idea that we can sort of wrap our minds around.
Already but not yet means that as Christ promised, the kingdom of God is at hand.
(14:57):
It's here, but you can't see it, so don't believe anybody that tells you,
there it is, here it is, because it's not altogether here yet.
It's already present, but not altogether yet here.
I know, some of you are probably feeling some pain in your brain.
(15:20):
Me too. I had to write this thing.
Basically, what you want to wrap your mind around as best you can is that we
are living in the reality of Christ's kingdom because we have been born again into that kingdom,
and yet that kingdom has not entirely been fulfilled because the king is still
(15:43):
operating sort of outside of it and will return to take command of it.
Or to put it another way, the kingdom is mostly in heaven and it's descending slowly,
like that ball in New York City on New Year's Eve,
it's slowly descending, and one day the kingdom will come on earth as it is
(16:09):
in heaven, and our king will preside over it all.
At that point, we will have the fullest expression of our new life in Christ
in all of our senses because we'll have bodies that are familiar but in a resurrected form perfected.
(16:29):
Now, with all that in mind, the kingdom concept of already but not yet can't
be hastened by faking it till you make it.
Although there are people who do that, and most famously, and I want to be very
cautious as I say the next thing, most famously are the Zionists.
(16:52):
Zionists are people who actively try to force the kingdom of God into existence.
By possessing the lands of the Bible in a forceful way.
Zionists are not only Jewish, but Catholic and Christian.
That is to say, they are part of this universal body of Christ that literally
(17:14):
is trying to produce heaven on earth so that the Messiah has to come.
And they believe that he's waiting for us to do that.
But this is a very dangerous misinterpretation of Scripture,
both Old Testament and New Testament.
The Bible makes it very specific that we are to receive the kingdom of God as
(17:39):
that infant whose sight gradually becomes clearer,
whose physical body is growing and maturing slowly over time.
So too the spiritual infant is growing and maturing over time,
and we receive it as it comes.
We can't force it.
How many of you know a little kid who really wanted to grow,
(18:02):
and they stood in front of you and went, and you asked them what they were doing,
and they said, I'm trying to get taller.
They do that, you know.
They do that. I've been trying to make hair happen on my head like that.
I go, and hope that it will return, but it doesn't.
So, you can't fake it till you make it. The kingdom will come in its own time,
(18:25):
and we receive it both as it is personally expressed and as it is universally expressed.
Christ is coming again, but none of us knows when, but we know with certainty that it will happen.
So, just as an aside, let me be very clear that when we, like Zionists,
(18:47):
try to force the kingdom into existence, which is a form of legalism,
we are basically creating tensions that will yield unfortunate consequences.
Ugliness will occur.
We see that happening in the Middle East even now. Now, having said that, let me be clear.
(19:09):
In no way would I condone the kinds of atrocities that occurred back in October
or the retaliation and misunderstanding that leads to unbelievably criminal
and satanic evil responses.
In other words, evil is evil no matter what justification is given.
(19:31):
You don't do the kinds of things that were done on October 7th and say that
it's their fault because they're Zionists. That doesn't work.
Evil is evil, no matter who's doing it. And that's a fact. And God will judge that.
Still, it is a reminder to us of the ugly consequences of trying to force the kingdom to happen.
(19:55):
So legalism, again, we're talking about some things that Frank Frank has taught
us in his book about the insurgents.
Legalism is always negative, ultimately, because it's people trying to draw
the expectations that will make Messiah happy, make Messiah come.
It will force our little world, wherever we are, whether it's a little church
(20:19):
community or a family or even a town, we're going to make the kingdom happen here.
We're going to force it. That's legalism. And there's always negative impacts.
Just because one believer doesn't express their relationship with Christ or
their journey of new birth and new life in Christ the way that you think they
(20:41):
should doesn't mean that they aren't doing it.
Because it turns out that just like any other elementary school,
this one being the Kingdom of God Elementary School, where all of us Christians
are at different grade levels of maturity,
some things can be expected of a sixth grader that can't be expected of a first grader.
So let's give each other the grace that Christ himself gives us and be fair
(21:06):
and honest with each other, even those who teach and lead.
Now, last week, Frank added to what we have experienced in his book on the insurgents
by sending a message that I thought was so apropos for today.
And I want to finish with that. It's a message that came in his Thursday unfiltered
email where he talked about the idea of the fear of the Lord.
(21:30):
Frank cited the scripture from Romans 3.18 that basically says that there is
no fear of God before their eyes.
This is another way to get the point across that we don't have a way to account
for what other people can or cannot see.
Any more than they can know what we see.
(21:52):
Right? You know, there's an old saying that I've found to be trustworthy and
true, especially in life in the church. And that is that there are some who
are so, that are just so blind, they cannot see, they will not see.
That's the problem, you see. Their blindness is about what they are not willing to see.
And you can show them until Jesus comes, and they're never going to see it until
(22:18):
they're willing to see it.
So Frank wants you to understand that that is a form of legalism,
and then there's another side to that he calls libertinism.
Basically, you either believe that if you get everybody to conform to the way
you think they should, they will be in the kingdom of Christ,
(22:38):
or you think the kingdom of Christ is so already here that everything that we
see is the way it is and anything goes.
And both are not true. True.
Spiritual blindness gives you the same problem that physical blindness does,
because it means you can't recognize the boundaries that might protect you from certain death.
(23:01):
You know, when you're wandering around in the darkness, it's important that
you feel the resistance of certain barriers, because it could stop you from falling into an abyss.
And it is the same with the kingdom of Christ.
Fear of the Lord is not about God's oppression.
(23:23):
Although Satan would lie to you and try to convince you of this fact,
the reality is God's boundaries are there for love's sake.
He gives you certain boundaries because he loves you, and what good parent wouldn't do that?
Why do we put up those little plastic fences in our house to keep kids,
(23:43):
toddlers from falling downstairs or going into places they shouldn't go?
Because we know there's danger there. So we create barriers in order to prevent
them from doing themselves harm.
And in the same way, we create certain rewards and structures in order to bring
out the very best in them.
And so these boundaries are acts of love. love, and children,
(24:08):
surprisingly, are naturally inclined to receive that well.
They like boundaries. They like structure.
It makes sense to them, but somehow when we get older and more willful,
we find it all to be unfair.
Frank has a beautiful way of illustrating what we should think about fear of
(24:29):
the Lord and the boundaries that God creates for us.
Now, I can relate to this because I like to ride a motorcycle,
and it turns out that Frank's illustration is about a person on a motorcycle
who's basically driving the motorcycle with the shield down on their helmet
so that they can't see where they're going.
God sits behind them, arms wrapped around them, and says, turn left here,
(24:56):
turn right here, speed up here, slow down here, here.
Give it a little extra gas here. We're going uphill.
Apply some braking here. We're going downhill. You see,
fear of the Lord is a kind of faith that you can enjoy this wild,
adventurous ride that is life in the kingdom, knowing that he's right there talking into you.
(25:22):
You know, on my motorcycle, we have
this intercom system, and when my wife talks to me from the back seat.
It literally feels like she's in my head.
It's all right. I don't mind. But what it means is that we are in the same way
as Frank illustrated it, experiencing the fear of the Lord in that way.
He's in our head telling us, turn, slow down, speed up.
(25:46):
We're getting ready ready to jump a ravine. It's going to be exciting.
I got you. With new eyes to see and the acceptance that our vision in the kingdom
realm is somewhat limited for now.
Isn't it gratifying to know that the Holy Spirit of God is right there in our
(26:06):
head even, giving us the guidance we need to enjoy an abundant life,
albeit within certain limitations?
Let us pray. Thank you, God, for your Word. Almighty and wonderful God,
get in our heads and tell us what to do, where to go, and how to do it,
because you love us so much, we pray.
(26:29):
Music.
Music.
(00:08):
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come,
Jesus answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed,
nor will they say, look, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
(00:28):
Let's just read it again. It's just two verses.
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom.
(00:50):
So in that spirit, reflecting on that opening song, for example,
I want to ask you to think about something just very quickly here.
I want you to imagine that you're walking through a very familiar room in your house in the dark.
I just did it yesterday. I was walking in the bedroom in the dark.
And for the most part, I found my way around comfortably, although it was an
(01:15):
uncomfortable comfort.
You know what I mean. You know what's there and you're afraid of tripping over
it or skinning your knee on it or something.
And so even though you're familiar with what you can't see, you are nevertheless
living dangerously, walking in the dark.
And so you have this familiarity with the room or the space,
(01:37):
but because it's dark, you're still a little cautious.
And that's basically what it's like for Christian believers navigating the kingdom
of Christ, albeit a negative image.
Now, what I mean by that is something people over a certain age will understand
and under a certain age don't grasp.
(01:57):
Back in the old days, we took pictures with cameras that used film.
And when your film was produced, you got a package of prints and you also got
a package of the negatives or actually the exposed film from your camera.
And what you you saw on the film from your camera was this weird reversal of light and darkness.
(02:23):
That's what we mean when we talk about a negative image in this context,
that the negative image is a reality that was captured on the film,
but its capturing of light and darkness is reversed. Right.
Now, in the same way, Christians view the world of the flesh and the kingdom of Christ.
(02:47):
We see this weird reversal of darkness and light, and it is present in a way
that is a distorted perception of things for us as Christian believers.
It's because we've been born again. again
it's because we have
(03:08):
a whole new sense of reality when we're
born again and it's a spiritual vision that we have attained as a gift of christ
jesus said you can't see the kingdom without this rebirth and it's not something
that you can earn or comes to you in a spiritual sort bright light.
(03:30):
It's actually just an inheritance that you receive, not to say just as though
it's a limited thing, but it's not as though you earned it or had some particularly conscious.
Awareness of having it transferred to you.
It's simply what happens when you're born again.
(03:51):
Now, we'll come back to that image in a minute, but what we really want to absorb
is the fact that that having been born again,
we're like newborn babies whose eyes take several months to really develop focus.
And in that time of focus, everything is somewhat blurry and distances are difficult to perceive.
(04:16):
Reflect for a minute on what real literal physical blindness is like.
In the 2020 census, it reported that more than 1.6 million Americans have some
form of vision impairment or blindness.
And what I gathered from that data is that describing the majority of blind
individuals worldwide as visually impaired is more fitting because most retain some sense of sight.
(04:46):
Most have some vision. It's just so limited that it's not functionally useful to them.
And this is a better description of what blindness is for many, many people.
Some do certainly live in total darkness. so
with that in mind we can draw
a parallel of our spiritual of the
(05:07):
spiritual impairment of the unbeliever they navigate
the world with this sort of spiritual blindness that
leaves everything in a state of grayness and fuzziness they look at the world
through this view of the gray twilight and because it's so natural to them they
don't know any better they were born that way And so the world seems perfectly natural to them,
(05:34):
albeit in this gray, visually impaired,
spiritually speaking, interpretation.
So what's a Christian believer then? Well, when a Christian believer is born again,
they're no longer spiritually, visually impaired, though it does take time for
(05:55):
the spiritual vision to clarify.
Clarify, again, referring to that understanding of what a newborn's vision is like.
If you're a newborn Christian, then it takes time for you to develop the sharpness
and clarity that comes with time.
I hear that I had such vision once upon a time, but it's long gone now.
(06:17):
But fortunately, that's the physical eyes I'm talking about.
What I do appreciate is that at this point in my life, my spiritual vision is
sharper than it's ever been.
And as born-again believers, you too could say that.
What God has done for us is to give us a sort of set of spiritual virtual reality goggles.
(06:39):
The kids gave me, or actually Laura gave me a set of VR goggles for a Christmas
present a couple of years ago.
My sister, the sister is, she's a nun, is a techie, like beyond,
it's crazy how much she loves her technology. and she decided it was time for her to upgrade.
(07:00):
And so I got hand-me-ups from my baby sister.
And I really enjoy those things. I mean, I really didn't know what I would think of them.
And I was very eager to try it before I buy it because I didn't even think I'd like it that much.
But it turns out that when you wear these things, you really are immersed in
(07:21):
a world that is vast, even though it's all confined to this device you're wearing over your eyes.
And you know that analogy I used about the room that you walk through in the dark.
Well, the truth is when I'm wearing these, I'm in a room that I can no longer
see because I'm wearing these goggles.
(07:42):
And I'm in a world that is very immersive and diverse and unique.
And yet I still have to be careful as I'm moving around my room lest I trip
over something or bounce off of a wall or something like that.
Because it turns out that the world of my flesh is still right there.
It's just that I can't see it anymore because I'm immersed in these goggles
(08:05):
and the world that they have put before my eyes and given my brain to perceive.
And so I'm literally drawing a parallel between that experience and the experience
of the born-again believer.
You have a perception of reality.
That is natural and normal to you, but then you have new eyes to see worlds
(08:27):
beyond your imagination.
And this is like the Lord giving the born-again believer new sight.
But as born-again believers, we become
more and more immersed in the world that is
now available to us and the vision of things that is informed by the Holy Spirit
so that we can easily collide with the world of the flesh that's just outside
(08:54):
of our new normal perception.
So the longer you walk with Christ and the more you are born again and then
maturing in the Spirit of Christ,
the more likely it is that your immersion in His kingdom will will cause you
to bounce off the walls of the world and the people who are moving through the
(09:15):
gray twilight that is the reality before new birth in Christ.
This is a wonderful place to be, but it's a dangerous place to be.
It's scary because there's pain.
There's pain when you collide with people who can't see what you see.
(09:37):
There's pain when you bounce off of painfully sharp and ragged edges that still
exist in the gray world around you.
This is why Jesus often says that the world that makes sense to us now still
doesn't make sense to those who are of the world.
(09:58):
That's why they hate him and will hate you because you love him.
Now, just for the sake of those who are like me, sort of fascinated with the
intellectual and sort of temporal scientific view of things,
we talk about this reality of the kingdom of Christ and entering into that kingdom
(10:21):
as a metaphor, but it isn't a metaphor. It's a reality.
It is the way things really are. and while
I mentioned living with this tension
between the world of the flesh that is so
familiar to us and to most of the people we
know in fact if I were to use the same statistic that I shared with you about
(10:45):
physical blindness I could tell you in quite general and honest terms that the
The vast majority of people in the world have a spiritual,
physical, and spiritual—that's not coming out the way I meant it.
They have a spiritual impairment.
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The census might have told us that there are 1.6 million people who are visually
impaired physically, but in reality, spiritual impairment is off the charts.
That's what I really wanted you to hear. People who are spiritually impaired
with their vision of the kingdom are everywhere.
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They're everywhere. They may be us.
In fact, it's fair to say that in this interpretation of the reality that is the kingdom of God,
the Bible gives us a clear understanding that we will never see entirely as
well as we can or will as God intends it until we're physically born again or
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resurrected in our return to the presence of Christ.
And so this Judeo-Christian understanding then
gives us a picture of the reality
of things and the reality of Christ's kingdom being co-existent and yet separate
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in a way that won't change until Christ returns and completely does away with the world of the flesh.
So what does that mean? Well, some people have interpreted that to mean something
like the movie The Matrix.
Some of you are old enough to remember The Matrix series of movies,
which suggests something called simulation theory.
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And some of us might think that the kingdom of God is a simulation or that we're
living in a simulation that is generated from the kingdom of God.
But this is a theory that really doesn't hold up in Scripture.
But it's one way that people have tried to interpret Scripture that doesn't
require you to make a commitment.
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And that's the problem. Whenever we try to make a theory within our religious
systems that gives us a plausible understanding of how things work in the world
of the kingdom of Christ—.
Basically leaves us challenged to explain things that only God can explain.
So simulation theory proponents will naturally assert that God's reality is
(13:32):
outside of our perception, but that's not true.
The Bible tells us explicitly that God created this world, this place that for
now is is grayer than it ought to be, and fuzzier than it ought to be,
and not as it once was in Eden.
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And that this reality is real, but we are no longer citizens of this world,
and therefore, as citizens of the kingdom of Christ after being born again,
our vision and our senses have been attuned
to something that has not yet come into fullness of expression on the planet
(14:14):
in the universe in other words eden vision eden hearing eden smell and taste and touch.
Therefore we are living with something that some scholars refer to as the already but not yet,
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which is originally a Jewish concept, but it finally, it fits pretty well with
the Christian interpretation, and it does, it seems,
express an idea that we can sort of wrap our minds around.
Already but not yet means that as Christ promised, the kingdom of God is at hand.
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It's here, but you can't see it, so don't believe anybody that tells you,
there it is, here it is, because it's not altogether here yet.
It's already present, but not altogether yet here.
I know, some of you are probably feeling some pain in your brain.
(15:20):
Me too. I had to write this thing.
Basically, what you want to wrap your mind around as best you can is that we
are living in the reality of Christ's kingdom because we have been born again into that kingdom,
and yet that kingdom has not entirely been fulfilled because the king is still
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operating sort of outside of it and will return to take command of it.
Or to put it another way, the kingdom is mostly in heaven and it's descending slowly,
like that ball in New York City on New Year's Eve,
it's slowly descending, and one day the kingdom will come on earth as it is
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in heaven, and our king will preside over it all.
At that point, we will have the fullest expression of our new life in Christ
in all of our senses because we'll have bodies that are familiar but in a resurrected form perfected.
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Now, with all that in mind, the kingdom concept of already but not yet can't
be hastened by faking it till you make it.
Although there are people who do that, and most famously, and I want to be very
cautious as I say the next thing, most famously are the Zionists.
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Zionists are people who actively try to force the kingdom of God into existence.
By possessing the lands of the Bible in a forceful way.
Zionists are not only Jewish, but Catholic and Christian.
That is to say, they are part of this universal body of Christ that literally
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is trying to produce heaven on earth so that the Messiah has to come.
And they believe that he's waiting for us to do that.
But this is a very dangerous misinterpretation of Scripture,
both Old Testament and New Testament.
The Bible makes it very specific that we are to receive the kingdom of God as
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that infant whose sight gradually becomes clearer,
whose physical body is growing and maturing slowly over time.
So too the spiritual infant is growing and maturing over time,
and we receive it as it comes.
We can't force it.
How many of you know a little kid who really wanted to grow,
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and they stood in front of you and went, and you asked them what they were doing,
and they said, I'm trying to get taller.
They do that, you know.
They do that. I've been trying to make hair happen on my head like that.
I go, and hope that it will return, but it doesn't.
So, you can't fake it till you make it. The kingdom will come in its own time,
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and we receive it both as it is personally expressed and as it is universally expressed.
Christ is coming again, but none of us knows when, but we know with certainty that it will happen.
So, just as an aside, let me be very clear that when we, like Zionists,
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try to force the kingdom into existence, which is a form of legalism,
we are basically creating tensions that will yield unfortunate consequences.
Ugliness will occur.
We see that happening in the Middle East even now. Now, having said that, let me be clear.
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In no way would I condone the kinds of atrocities that occurred back in October
or the retaliation and misunderstanding that leads to unbelievably criminal
and satanic evil responses.
In other words, evil is evil no matter what justification is given.
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You don't do the kinds of things that were done on October 7th and say that
it's their fault because they're Zionists. That doesn't work.
Evil is evil, no matter who's doing it. And that's a fact. And God will judge that.
Still, it is a reminder to us of the ugly consequences of trying to force the kingdom to happen.
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So legalism, again, we're talking about some things that Frank Frank has taught
us in his book about the insurgents.
Legalism is always negative, ultimately, because it's people trying to draw
the expectations that will make Messiah happy, make Messiah come.
It will force our little world, wherever we are, whether it's a little church
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community or a family or even a town, we're going to make the kingdom happen here.
We're going to force it. That's legalism. And there's always negative impacts.
Just because one believer doesn't express their relationship with Christ or
their journey of new birth and new life in Christ the way that you think they
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should doesn't mean that they aren't doing it.
Because it turns out that just like any other elementary school,
this one being the Kingdom of God Elementary School, where all of us Christians
are at different grade levels of maturity,
some things can be expected of a sixth grader that can't be expected of a first grader.
So let's give each other the grace that Christ himself gives us and be fair
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and honest with each other, even those who teach and lead.
Now, last week, Frank added to what we have experienced in his book on the insurgents
by sending a message that I thought was so apropos for today.
And I want to finish with that. It's a message that came in his Thursday unfiltered
email where he talked about the idea of the fear of the Lord.
(21:30):
Frank cited the scripture from Romans 3.18 that basically says that there is
no fear of God before their eyes.
This is another way to get the point across that we don't have a way to account
for what other people can or cannot see.
Any more than they can know what we see.
(21:52):
Right? You know, there's an old saying that I've found to be trustworthy and
true, especially in life in the church. And that is that there are some who
are so, that are just so blind, they cannot see, they will not see.
That's the problem, you see. Their blindness is about what they are not willing to see.
And you can show them until Jesus comes, and they're never going to see it until
(22:18):
they're willing to see it.
So Frank wants you to understand that that is a form of legalism,
and then there's another side to that he calls libertinism.
Basically, you either believe that if you get everybody to conform to the way
you think they should, they will be in the kingdom of Christ,
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or you think the kingdom of Christ is so already here that everything that we
see is the way it is and anything goes.
And both are not true. True.
Spiritual blindness gives you the same problem that physical blindness does,
because it means you can't recognize the boundaries that might protect you from certain death.
(23:01):
You know, when you're wandering around in the darkness, it's important that
you feel the resistance of certain barriers, because it could stop you from falling into an abyss.
And it is the same with the kingdom of Christ.
Fear of the Lord is not about God's oppression.
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Although Satan would lie to you and try to convince you of this fact,
the reality is God's boundaries are there for love's sake.
He gives you certain boundaries because he loves you, and what good parent wouldn't do that?
Why do we put up those little plastic fences in our house to keep kids,
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toddlers from falling downstairs or going into places they shouldn't go?
Because we know there's danger there. So we create barriers in order to prevent
them from doing themselves harm.
And in the same way, we create certain rewards and structures in order to bring
out the very best in them.
And so these boundaries are acts of love. love, and children,
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surprisingly, are naturally inclined to receive that well.
They like boundaries. They like structure.
It makes sense to them, but somehow when we get older and more willful,
we find it all to be unfair.
Frank has a beautiful way of illustrating what we should think about fear of
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the Lord and the boundaries that God creates for us.
Now, I can relate to this because I like to ride a motorcycle,
and it turns out that Frank's illustration is about a person on a motorcycle
who's basically driving the motorcycle with the shield down on their helmet
so that they can't see where they're going.
God sits behind them, arms wrapped around them, and says, turn left here,
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turn right here, speed up here, slow down here, here.
Give it a little extra gas here. We're going uphill.
Apply some braking here. We're going downhill. You see,
fear of the Lord is a kind of faith that you can enjoy this wild,
adventurous ride that is life in the kingdom, knowing that he's right there talking into you.
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You know, on my motorcycle, we have
this intercom system, and when my wife talks to me from the back seat.
It literally feels like she's in my head.
It's all right. I don't mind. But what it means is that we are in the same way
as Frank illustrated it, experiencing the fear of the Lord in that way.
He's in our head telling us, turn, slow down, speed up.
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We're getting ready ready to jump a ravine. It's going to be exciting.
I got you. With new eyes to see and the acceptance that our vision in the kingdom
realm is somewhat limited for now.
Isn't it gratifying to know that the Holy Spirit of God is right there in our
(26:06):
head even, giving us the guidance we need to enjoy an abundant life,
albeit within certain limitations?
Let us pray. Thank you, God, for your Word. Almighty and wonderful God,
get in our heads and tell us what to do, where to go, and how to do it,
because you love us so much, we pray.
(26:29):
Music.
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