“Kingdom of God: Mysteries/Abundance/Key” 

For the scribe who seemed to be open to the fact of the Messiahship of Jesus and responded favorably to Him, Jesus said: ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mk 12:34)

This man was among those who, in some measure, had a preliminary knowledge of God since he was schooled and trained in this field.   

Of his openness to Jesus and of those others who accepted the Messiah, Jesus said of such: ‘...whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance...’.  

These know the ‘mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.’ (Mt 13:11)

Why did Jesus use this guideline, or prescription, for the  gaining of the spiritual knowledge about the mysteries of God’s kingdom?

In all His teachings, Jesus had in mind a certain condition for admittance and a certain type of character for those who are admitted to His kingdom. 

First, Jesus summarized the condition for admittance, in Acts 26:18, by saying to Paul: ‘...to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and [receive] inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me.’

These are the ones whose eyes are opened to turn from darkness to light, who are loosed from the dominion of Satan unto God, and who receive God’s full forgiveness.

They get a share of what God’s people enjoy when Jesus, the Christ, is embraced.  

So - those to whom ‘more shall be given’, they already have something in their possession that qualifies them for such a priceless gift - the gift of the treasure of a heart fixed in God through Jesus Christ.

And - along with the reception of Him, there is given the organic element of initiating change. 

And that change causes a stepping along in Christ and the discovery of the mysteries of His kingdom.    

You see - what Paul stated here in Acts 26 is exactly in line with what God declared both to the nations and to His own people in Isaiah 41 and 42, as we have seen earlier.

Paul focused on the progressive unfolding of the knowledge of divine redemption wherein God brought the apex of that redemption to be in Jesus Christ.

In other words, Paul saw that God worked exactly as He said He would.

Since God is always interested more in repentance than in judgment, God overlooked all the idolatrous ignorance of mankind. 

But, He gave, in the person and work of Jesus, His Son, the opportunity to know God aright.

God acted in such a way that the evil grip that keeps one from knowing the true and living God is broken. 

Read through Acts 14:15-18 and Rom 3:20-26 to see this for yourself.

So - to reject Jesus is to reject the personal, vicarious intervention of God on behalf of all mankind and to become subject to the future divine judgment to be meted out by the very One, the Christ, Who men reject even today.

Thus, Jesus, in Jn 12:48, warned: ‘...he that rejects Me and refuses to accept My words...the same will judge him in the last day.’

Now - I ask you - with this as the backdrop for human life, is this a divine truth that can be glibly and flippantly set aside by mankind, as though it does not matter?    
 
Of course not!

Moses exhorted the Israelites about this ‘stepping-along’ principle by telling them: ‘...man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ (Deut 8:3)

The most basic of all essentials of life mankind was to follow is to be found here.

It is God’s Word that is the standard of measurement to observe.

The first commandment of all, as Jesus told the scribe in Mk 12, is to love God with one’s whole being. 

And to love Him in this way is shown primarily by devotion to His revealed purpose for mankind and by cooperation with His intentions and His will: that is, mankind’s conscience is to be held to the Word of God.

A deviation to this life principle will be specifically seen in the end time when it is too late to change anything. 

For - the most valuable revelation that will ultimately be brought to light is that those are ‘blessed that do His [God’s] commandments...’.

It is they who will ‘...have the right to the tree of life, and [who will] ...enter in through the gates into the city.’ (Rev 22:14) 

To such, Jesus had said: ‘...it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven...’. (Mt 13:11)

The followers of Jesus Christ have been given the Gift of God’s Son and His Son gives them the Gift of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. 

They are given the sign that a direct dependence upon the Word that God speaks in His Son is the key to entering His kingdom.

And, thereby they can be granted the use of all the true spiritual principles and all the spiritual privileges they can possibly absorb, digest, and enjoy! 

This is why Jesus gave this guideline of ‘...whoever hath, shall be given in abundance...’ of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

But why could others not realize this great truth as Jesus spoke it?   

One of the points of view of Judaism in Jesus’ day was its belief in the authority of its tradition which, of course, is to be given its rightful place.  

God’s will had been revealed in past history.

And the interpretation of its meaning was to be found in what the teachers of the past history taught regarding it.

The problem, however, was that the final authority about religious and moral outlooks could only be interpreted by these scholars who made up the governing body of the religious community.

They were the ones who decided matters and whatever they  determined became law and duty.

Thus, if untrained, unlicensed teachers were permitted to say what they thought God’s will was, the problem arising from that could bring the entire nation to rootless wanderings minus the familiar guideposts of past religious history.

This deflection is what was feared and so it is why this was one of the basic issues in the conflict of the religious leaders with Jesus.

As an example of this conflict, you may want to refer to Jn 5:16-23 where Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath. 

I will not go into details about it now, but, according to the interpretation the authorities held, Jesus had committed a violation of the rule.

But Jesus, in doing what He did, was only declaring what the present will of God really was.  

He was showing the world the wideness of God’s mercy to meet human need, even on a Sabbath day, with the quickening Word of Christ Who gave this poor, helpless, lame sufferer the healing to take up his bed and walk.

Yes - the leaders were personally prejudiced against Jesus, especially after He told them about His equality with God, the Father.

But, in staying strictly to the will of God in the divine character of His morals and values, Jesus expressed exactly Who God is.

He told them what the will of God really was: the Word that spoke and speaks above all else, even - or, perhaps I should say - especially above current behavioral patterns.

And, at the same time, He expressed God’s desire for the individual person to come to expression within himself, to have a heart completely open to His divine standards - opened to put away all else and to be governed by the character of God first.

This is why Jesus kept insisting that the motives or attitudes of the heart were important.

At one time, in a lengthy discourse He had with those who rejected Him, Jesus said: ‘...Ye have neither heard His [that is, God, the Father’s] voice at any time, nor seen His shape.

And ye have not His Word abiding in you for Whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not.’

That was true, or else there would have been a connection of Isa 42:1-4 to Christ, as they observed Him in His work among them.

But, for them to fairly judge and consider their own standing before God, He admonished: ‘Search the scriptures: for in them ye think ye have eternal life...’. (Jn 5:37-39)

He did this because He was attaching a dynamic to His teachings of the morals and values that God had set up for mankind from the beginning.

We see the demonstration of this from the post-resurrection side of His life in 1 Cor 6:9-10.

To the Corinthians who were known for their laxness of morals,  Paul wrote: ‘Do you not know that the unrighteous shall NOT inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.’ 

This was the condition of the very debased and corrupt society in Corinth at that time. 

It was a bleak picture but Paul went on to say, in verse eleven, ‘And such were some of you’.

You see - what Jesus brought to the Christians living in Corinth was a seismic change in them - a complete turn about of their inner beings.

Jesus had supplied the Corinthians the key to life: it was His dynamic to change the heart and the life - to make them what they knew they should be but had never been - and to give them strength and courage to stand against the tide of the Corinthian moral filth and debauchery.

The life of Christ in these Corinthians gave them the greatest freedom of all - the freedom NOT to sin - and the power and will to NOT sin. 

They gained the assurance that the Christian life they had heard of in theory actually could be lived out in practice!

This was, and is, the type of character that makes up the Kingdom of God. 

And, if we were really able to see what Christ had done in His fullest glory possible, we would see that His work is not a matter of the resuscitation of life.

It is far, far more! It is a replacement of life that elevates, exalts, and enthrones the actual entering into God’s presence!

Think about this sometime. If it really ever sinks deep within, we would be treating this life of Christ within us with a far greater depth of reverence and honor than we are now treating it - believe me, we would! 

Thus, in the Mk 12 and Mt 13 references we saw earlier, although the resurrection was yet ahead of Him, at that time Jesus was giving the difference between what the authorities were teaching and what He taught about the principles of life God had laid down from the beginning. 

Under the scribal tradition, man’s goodness had to be strictly according to law so that it could be socially enforceable.

No court could judge a man on his motives alone. In no time at all, that would overthrow the concept of a code of behavior commanded and enforced by the law.

But Jesus was teaching about a goodness of inner purpose and motive that made a man’s relationship with God a distinctly personal matter of judging man’s conscience in the light of God’s presence and in the light of His standard of life.

He was revealing the moral part of God’s eternal mind that was to be perpetually binding in man’s heart. 

So - Jesus dug down below the surface problems - all the way down to the underlying, permanent one - to the principle and attitude that dominated life.

And if the principle and attitude that dominates life is not as the scribe had indicated it should be (going back to Mk 12), there is no possibility of entering the kingdom of God.   

In other words, in a personal way, Jesus is giving men the opportunity of spiritual participation in the divine life of a new character, life lived in ordinary surroundings from a new center.

So, for the Christian, God’s Word is the sole, supreme source and norm of all Christian belief and practice, and all that we do and say is judged by it.

It is something that cannot be just read, nor can it be just understood by arguing about it, nor even gained through a theological discussion about it. 

But - how does it come?

Jesus chose His disciples that they might be brought into this living principle by His divine hand, and this has been the Christian secret ever since.

And to that one who has this key, ‘more shall be given’, even in more abundance.

But - ‘drop out the person of Jesus from the gospel and it automatically becomes an ethical system, convincing perhaps in its wisdom and insight, but not filled with the power of...’ the life Christ is. 

Only in Jesus do we see what it involves in our kind of world. 

There are currents of modern culture that are ever present in any age. 

In every way, man’s make-up is no different today from what Corinth was in its day for - ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’

But - as believers who have Jesus Christ within, what we once were, we no longer are.

He is the purpose of life.

Do we ‘see’ that?

If we do, then, we see what an awesome privilege it is to just let His light ‘so shine that men may see your good works and glorify your Father Who is in heaven.’ 

And we find ourselves - or, we ought to be finding ourselves - resisting within ourselves the tendency that is all about us to pull down Scripture to the present, loose mindset of our culture.

We find ourselves - or we ought to be finding ourselves -  ‘resisting the tendency to reduce the proclamation of the gospel of Christ to the ‘self-help’ tips of our day.’

We find ourselves, more and more, resisting the temptation to give in to anything that is not Christ in us. 

And, as we do, the blinders upon the eyes of our hearts keep dropping away and we find that the mysteries of His kingdom become less and less mysterious to us - they are now life! 

And, in that ‘Life’, we ‘live, and move, and have our being’.

I will close here for tonight. 

I pray we all will take these thoughts before the Lord within our own hearts this week.

Ponder them - pray honestly about them - before the face of God.

And may we all give the Holy Spirit ample time to make the truth of Christ real and living within ourselves. 

Amen. 
 
Let us pray.