Entering the Kingdom: Beyond Knowledge to Transformation

The kingdom of God means the rule of God, the reign of God, the blessings that God showers upon his people, his citizens, and they had been prophesying and predicting that it was going to come, this wonderfully age when the kingdom of God should come. Our Lord said the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, it's drawn near. Clearly, his teaching is that it has drawn near in him himself. He is the king, and the kingdom comes with him. [00:03:16]

The kingdom of God is sharply defined, and there's a gate of entry into this kingdom. We go further, our Lord says it is a strait gate. It's not a very broad and wide one where people can sleep in, and you're not sure whether they've gone in or not or who's gone in. Our domain is gone in, not at all. It's a strait gate, and it leads to a narrow way. [00:12:38]

The Christian is a man according to the New Testament to consider something like this: I was, I am. That's how the Apostle put it about those Corinthians, wasn't it? He says, as such were some of you. They've been drunkards, adulterers, fornicators, etcetera. Such were some of you, but you're not like that now. You've been washed, you've been sanctified, you've been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. [00:14:44]

There is no vagueness or indefiniteness about this. A man is either in the kingdom or else he is not in the kingdom, and all this modern suggestion of indefiniteness and vagueness is of the devil. The Christian, as I'm trying to show on Sunday mornings, is a man who should know in whom he has believed. He knows that he's no longer what he was. He knows where he stands. He knows that he's in the kingdom of God. [00:16:15]

The thing that God calls for is that men should love him with the whole of his being and serve Him and love his neighbor as himself. He's got a spiritual understanding of the law, and that's a tremendous thing to say about him. In the Pharisees in general, they hadn't got it. They said as long as I don't actually murder a man physically, the commandment which says thou shalt not kill is all right as far as I'm concerned. [00:36:57]

The law of God is not here for you to applaud; it's here for you to apply. Listen to Paul putting it like this: not the hearers of the law just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. And this is where this man fails and fails so lamentably. It was the trouble with the whole nation of the Jews. They said we are God's people, but that God has given us the law. [00:45:11]

He doesn't realize that all the failed to keep the law, himself included. He doesn't realize the truth of the word that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He hasn't realized that it's true of him as of everybody that there is none righteous, no not one. He doesn't realize that it's true of him and all others that the whole world lieth guilty before God and contend and facing hell. [00:49:16]

He doesn't realize above all that the only one who can help him in that position is the very one to whom he gave his original question. For if he had not realized that he is the son of God incarnate, the everlasting Word made flesh, walking the roads of Galilee, teaching, working miracles, shown to be nailed on a cross, he would have realized that this son of God had come into the world for this reason. [00:50:04]

The son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. He came into the world because the law of God condemns us all. No man has loved God, no man can in the sense demented not his neighbor as himself. We are therefore all lost. He came. Why did he come? Let Paul Ince he was made of a woman made under the law. What for? To redeem them that are under the law. [00:51:39]

You can't get into the kingdom of God except you keep the law of God, and we can't. There's only one who's ever kept it. He came into the world in order that he might keep it. He was made of a woman made under the law. He became a man in order that he might put himself into this law that condemns us, and he lived it, he honored it, he kept it to the full. [00:52:39]

The law of God has been broken, and the punishment for the breaking of the law is death. The wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Here is the condemnation of the law upon sin and evil and transgression, and it will exact its penalty. He came and took on him human nature and lived and went to the cross. What for? To receive the penalty of the broken law of God. [00:53:39]

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. God deliver us from a mere intellectual theoretical interest in religion and in the kingdom of God. Have you heard the law of God speaking to you? The question that every one of us shall answer to the eternal God of judgment is, have you loved me with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and your neighbor as yourself? [00:54:39]