Culture of the Kingdom
Today’s Topic: Apostles’ Doctrine: Foundation of Authority
Scripture: Matthew 28:18; Matthew 10:33
Greetings Kingdom Citizens
We know that all authority and all power is given to Jesus. Now Jesus has ascended back to the Father and sits at the right hand of the Father. So the question is how does His Kingdom benefit, in the earth, from the authority with Him being on the throne in Heaven and not present as Himself in the earth? We discussed this in various messages so we will not dwell on it. However, the authority of the Kingdom and the King functions in the earth by delegation. So if you have divine authority in the Earth then you must claim some measure of delegation from Jesus whose authority it is. This is the heart of understanding Ambassadorship. Ambassadors represent the one who sends them. Their power is only as good as the one who the power originated from. In many cases it is from a head of state such as a President or Prime Minister. So it should be to no surprise that the authority given to the apostles is a foundational authority. Now why would it be foundational? The grace that is given to the apostolic is to establish order in the Kingdom of God. Without order you will have a society or culture that is uncontrolled and have no sense of direction or purpose. Funny, if we look at the church today can we see that there is a lack of foundation and order? The foundation and order I am talking about is not a Pastoral order or the doctrine of the denominations. It is the foundation that Jesus laid out for the disciples who became the apostles. Today’s church is steeped in the doctrine that the Pastor is the foundational authority and the Kingdom ordains the apostolic as the foundational authority. Now the ones who receive this authority are those who do the will of God. As a result, the power that comes with the authority comes from the Living God. So how does this power operate through us?
The power operates only on voluntary compliance. In other words can choose not to do the Will of the Father, but then do not claim to have power because if you do then your witness is false. The individual does not get to decide what he or she believes or does not believe. The only decision that you have in the Kingdom of God is whether to submit to the rule of Christ. Now if you choose to not submit to Christ then you deny Him and these are the words of Jesus:
Matthew 10:33: “But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven”
So denying Christ will also result in Him denying you before the Father and I am sure we do not want that. But when you submit to the rule of Christ, He reveals the nature of God, nature of the eternal and the concepts of Heaven and the Kingdom to you. But a problem we run into is that we try to reason these concepts pertaining to the eternal through scientific methods and worldly concepts and this leads to a wisdom that is not from above (Heaven) but from beneath (Hell).
The culture of the Kingdom is what the very nature of the Kingdom actually is and it begins with the gospel of a King, The Anointed One, Jesus the Christ who has been established over all the earth by a grant of authority to the Father. In the next message we will look at the dangers of reasoning and how it counteracts in the lives of a believer to experience the culture of the Kingdom.
At the Father’s Service,
Elder Calvin Calhoun Jr.
