Christ John Otto directs Belonging House, an international community of artists and creative people.
You can find out more at https://belonging.house
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The Foundation of the Kingdom
If you are a disciple of Jesus, you never mature beyond the basics.
The Kingdom is based on one universal principle:
You must die first if you want to live.
You must go low if you want to be raised up.
You must surrender all if you want to succeed.
And if you do these things
you will receive unseen resources
and this flow of grace will then flow out of you to others.
This is the opposite of the world's thinking.
The world says that you keep incrementally getting better and better.
You do what you can to get ahead,
and you work your way to the top.
And once you get to the top, pay your dues, and are successful,
your worth as a human being is proven, and you are better than other people.
And then once you made it,
you can do good things with the money you made and be remembered.
This honestly is the foundation of most of the world's charitable work.
In Luke's gospel, Jesus is presented teaching a much more succinct version of the Sermon on the Mount. Here is the sermon on the plain, a broad flat place. Jesus is more direct, and a lot more prophetic in Luke's version:
He begins with four "blesseds"
“Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.
“Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
Whenever we hear the word "blessed" in the New Testament, you are seeing the greek word "makarios." This word does not mean "happy."
It means full, satisfied, or enlarged. You are a bit grand if you are blessed.
And whenever we encounter this word in the Bible, we have to remember the Jewish thinking behind it. When a Jewish person hears this word,
they mentally go back to Deuteronomy 28:
“And if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments which I command you this day, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-trough. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
And Jesus turns this on its head:
You are blessed when you are poor.
You are blessed when you are hungry.
You are blessed when you weep.
You are blessed when you are hated, slandered, and excluded.
The Kingdom is not what you see now.
The Kingdom is about unseen resources now,
and a visible future fulfillment.
This is always an already but not yet kingdom.
Right now you have the Holy Spirit within you as a deposit,
and when Jesus returns you will get all the fulfillment.
You will inherit the kingdom.
You will be full.
You will laugh.
You will be satisfied.
In the Kingdom, you are no greater than Abraham
who left his father's house and went to a place he did not know,
because he was looking for the city not made with hands.
When I was a student one of my teachers
told me I was in love with a church that didn't exist.
This is the Kingdom.
We are looking for something that doesn't exist here.
We are looking for a kingdom not made with hands.
Jesus is talking about true justice--
and this only makes sense when you have a supernatural worldview
where our satisfaction and life comes from unseen resources.
The hungry, the poor, the grieving, the outcast, and the persecuted are not going to see justice in this life--that justice is only going to happen after this life. We are called to bring the kingdom to this earth, but it is not going to be fulfilled until the resurrection and the return of the King.
And then Jesus tells us about
the only assurance of salvation in the New Testament.
The only way you will know
if you are going to heaven is
if men hate you,
and when they exclude you and revile you,
and cast out your name as evil,
on account of the Son of man!
And Jesus says,
Rejoice and be glad.
As some of you know,
I have experienced a lot of these things.
And honestly,
there are many days I get down about it.
And one day the Lord really spoke to me
and said,
why are you so down?
You are going to heaven,
and your reward is very great.
Rejoice.
Rejoice.
A Kingdom perspective
is everything.
I have been reading quotes from Smith Wigglesworth,
and one of them was about having a pure heart.
He said the more pure our heart is,
the more faith we will have.
And purity is about direction.
If you are directed toward the Kingdom,
you will begin to flow in the reality of the Kingdom.
Faith
is believing that the word the Lord said is true.
Let it be to me according to your word.
That's all faith is.
And when you get down and depressed,
just choose to align yourself with the word
and you will sense the faith flowing.
And then Jesus speaks a series of woes:
“But woe to you that are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
“Woe to you that are full now,
for you shall hunger.
“Woe to you that laugh now,
for you shall mourn and weep.
“Woe to you, when all men speak well of you,
for so their fathers did to the false prophets.
From a human earthly perspective
Jesus seems to be saying that the Kingdom
is all about socio-economic justice,
and there are many who use these kinds of passages
to support a Marxist/socialist kind of theology.
Jesus is not saying that at all.
And Torah tells us we are not to
give preference to the poor when we make decisions
or make judgements.
Jesus is talking about resources.
Woe to you that are benefitting from earthly resources.
Woe to you that trust in things that are going to disappear.
Woe to you that see your bank account and your stocked fridge
and your big earthly achievements as a sign of your value.
Those things are outside-in accomplishments,
and the kingdom is inside out.
When you die,
those things will be cast to the four winds.
One day I was walking through the city of London,
and there was an ancient bit of a church that
had been preserved.
The street was built around it,
and I asked the Lord
what he wanted to do with that.
And the Lord said,
"I don't care, I didn't build that."
A lot of the things we think are important
are not important for the Kingdom.
People keep praying for God to revive things
that He didn't build in the first place.
God has left the building.
You are the building.
And this why how we live is important.
Jesus gives us practical instructions
for how to flow in the unseen resources of the kingdom.
How are we to live
as people who have died
and live with the unseen power of the resurrection?
Love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you.
To him who strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other also;
and from him who takes away your cloak
do not withhold your coat as well.
Give to every one who begs from you;
and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.
And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.
These things are impossible in our strength.
And this is why so few people do them.
It is much easier to perform a religious ritual
(like going to conferences and taking classes,
going on pilgrimages or putting rocks in your shoes)
than to do these basic things that Jesus asks.
I lamented to a friend recently
that I have not heard a sermon on the Golden Rule in maybe 30 years.
Do to others
as you would have others do to you.
It's much easier to say
"I'm a Christian and God is blessing me by
giving me a big ministry,
a big house,
and a big following on social media."
I have met and worked with a lot of famous people.
Many of them reminded me of an old maxim from show business,
"be nice to the people you meet on the way up,
so that they are nice to you on the way down."
In order to do this,
you have to lay down your life
and your desires
and your need to be justified, vindicated, and have revenge.
A desire for revenge and justice
will stop the flow.
This turns into resentment and bitterness,
and often
eventually gets turned toward God.
Kingdom reality is different.
You are royalty.
You have access to the resources of the Kingdom.
You have the fruit of the spirit
that can flow out of you.
And so you look at the person who has
excluded you,
slandered you,
persecuted you,
and attacked you,
and you say.
I forgive you with the forgiveness the Father has given me.
I bless you with the peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control
that the Holy Spirit gives to me.
Because I am a blessed person
and my name is written in heaven.
I can give to you what I have.
I can be a conduit of the Kingdom into this world
and I can do to others
what I wish they would do to me,
regardless of what the outcome is.
You are giving up your right to be right.
In all honesty,
most of what troubles us
in this world
would be sorted out with that little direction.
Put others before your own wants and needs
and trust God to meet your need.
Do to others as you would have others do to you.
This is the essence of sainthood.
Foundation of the Kingdom