The kingdom of God is within you

Deuteronomy 30: 9-14. The word of God is near you – it is not so remote that we have to strain to hear. It reminds me of Jesus saying in Luke 17:21, “The kingdom of God is within you”

Colossians 1: 1-14. God wants us to have “life in all its fulness” as it says in John and here Paul too prays for our growth as human beings, a process called “bearing fruit” in the New Testament. This is in fact the purpose of God for every individual. To grow into the person that God always wanted us to be.

Luke 10: 25-37. Perhaps one of the best-known parables of Jesus in the New Testament. “The Good Samaritan” tells us not only who our neighbour is (all fellow human beings), but that neighbourliness is demonstrated when we answer their need.

We believe two different things about God at the same time. We believe he transcends all things and is in some way outside and distinct from the created order – the Orthodox call Him the source less source of everything.

But we also believe that God is involved and present to us within the created order. We believe that Jesus Christ was as Paul describes Him in the very next verse in Colossians “the image of the invisible God” but that is the start of next Sunday’s reading from Colossians

Paul also wrote in 2 Corinthians “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”.

So God is distinct from the world, yet entered the world, to bring that world back into a relationship with Himself that had strayed from his way and his truth.

I think it only fair to tell you at this point that there will be a test on all this at the end.

Everything I have said so far speaks of relationship. How God relates to Jesus, how God relates to the world, and because we are made in the image of God, therefore how we relate to God and how we relate to the world.

The Bible is a book dedicated to those two twin dilemmas facing humankind.

Through Jesus, God communicated with us directly through parables how to address those two dilemmas and one of the most famous is this parable we heard today called the good Samaritan.

The Golden rule is basically Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

But the question “who is my neighbour” was asked because the questioner wanted to know where to draw the line between neighbour and non-neighbour.

In the parable Jesus makes clear that real love does not ask for limits, but only for opportunity, so if a person has real love in his heart, he won’t ask the scribe’s question.

Jesus was saying, using their own terms and prejudice against them, “Here by your own admission is a half-breed heretic fulfilling God’s law better than the pillars of the Jewish religion”. This is what neighbour love means my friend and this is the kind of action God requires of you.

So while it is natural for humanity to organise ourselves into groups, nationalities, languages, social classes, religions and nations and a hundred other ways of drawing lines between us, those lines must be porous.

Before ad behind all those divisions, we share a common humanity. In Christian terms we are all made in the image of God, and love knows no barriers.

If we can relate to people in that way, we are doing what God requires of us when we relate to others.

That is one of the hallmarks of being transferred from the powers of darkness as Paul puts it today, into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Bringing people into the kingdom of God was the central feature of all Jesus’ preaching. The first record of what Jesus preached is recorded in Mark, “Repent for the kingdom of God has come near.”

The Kingdom of God is present wherever God’s ways, his truth and his life reign or hold sway in anyone’s heart. That is what we mean by saying “Jesus is Lord”.

Jesus is only Lord if you actually follow and do God’s ways. Someone is your Lord when you owe them your loyalty and allegiance and they direct your thoughts and actions.

Everything I’ve been speaking about this morning is neatly summarized in a beautiful exchange in Luke.

Luke 17:20-21 New King James Version (NKJV)

The Coming of the Kingdom

²⁰ Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; ²¹ nor will they say, ^[a]‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

The kingdom of God is within you. It is all about the disposition of the human heart, mind, soul and spirit.

Following Jesus is how we enter the kingdom of God. In doing so we heal our relationships with each other and with God creating peace.