Episode 89 - Are We Too Earthly Minded for Heavenly Good?

In this engaging episode, we explore the concept of the Kingdom of God and how our focus shapes our actions and beliefs. We reflect on the challenge of remaining steadfast amidst worldly distractions.

• The Christian focus on the unseen kingdom
• Navigating the tension between community care and spiritual nourishment
• Understanding the essence of love as a revolutionary force
• Differentiating true Kingdom agendas from earthly narratives
• Prioritising connection to Christ above societal pressures

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Kingdom
• 10:00 Polycarp's Vision and Its Relevance
• 20:00 The Challenge of Silence and Compromise
• 30:00 Distinguishing Kingdom Agendas from Earthly Ones
• 40:00 The Revolution of Love Defined
• 50:00 Balancing Community Engagement with Spiritual Priorities

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, and we're continuing to dig down into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Heavens, and we ended last time with that vision of Polycarp and how he was able to bear such strong witness to Christ and his Kingdom, because his attention was so fixed on the unseen kingdom of the heavens rather than the very seen kingdoms of earth, and he couldn't be intimidated by the threats or the rewards that earthly kingdoms could offer. And the reason we shared that was so that we could feel the challenge of that. How easily are we intimidated by the threats or bought off by the comforts, or bought off by the comforts, the pleasures and treasures of this passing age, so that we are silent or compromised? And that idea of being silenced or compromised is important, because it's what is it that we are really silenced and compromised about? So I meet people who are wanting, they're saying things like I want to speak truth to power, or I want to call out this abuse, or I'm tired of this regime, one government or one type of. I want to call that out, and that's what kingdom is all about. And it's like well, is it, though? Because there's like Marxists will do that. Marxists will speak truth to power, as that incredibly worn-out phrase is. Atheists will do that, doing that like shouting about the problems of the kingdoms of this world, and even accurately doing that, genuinely accurately, pointing out the injustices, the corruption of this present age. That is not necessarily anything to do with the kingdom of Christ. It's got none, maybe has nothing to do with Christ and his church and his agenda at all. Atheists do it, marxists do it, communists, um, capitalists do it and point out the absurdities in governments and regimes, or how ineffective things are, or how and and all that.

Speaker 1: 2:44

And then Christians do it too. Yeah, they'll say, but they usually just say the same things that non-Christians say. When they're doing that, in the main, in the main, in my experience and this is this is what we want to examine when we look at what is normally unseen meaning, when we set our hearts and minds on serving the divine emperor rather than merely focusing on the very temporary and flimsy matters that are easily seen around us, when we do that, when we are obsessed with the unseen kingdom of the heavens, then our lives change, really change, and why. That's important for us to state that very strongly and let me just spell it out a bit more that when, according to the scriptures and church history, according to the scriptures and church history, it's kind of when Christians are really heavenly minded in the biblical sense of that, then they really are revolutionary on earth. So it's the whole Lord's Prayer thing May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So it's when people know how his will is done in heaven and are captured by the heavenly vision, then it can be that his will is done on earth as it is done in heaven.

Speaker 1: 4:19

But too often people are saying I don't want to be too heavenly minded to be of no earthly good, and I think that once had some meaning. Now I just I hardly. I don't think I have ever met someone for many, many years who I thought was in any danger of being too heavenly minded. I think we know lots of us are too earthly minded to be of no heavenly good. But it's when we are obsessed with the divine emperor and the kingdom of the heavens and the agenda of eternity and so on, then we can begin to live the revolution of love through church, by the power of the Spirit, and then we can be in a place where we are set free from the pleasures and treasures of this passing age and we're no longer intimidated by the threats, and then Christians genuinely regard money and possessions as of no great value because they're only for this life, which is, you know, as Jesus is constantly saying. They can be stolen, they can corrupt, they decay. All the pleasures and treasures of this we can't. None of them are long-term investments. So then we can share them and sell them and give them to our church family, and when we're no longer bothered about, when our entire identity and security isn't in this passing age, then we can turn the other cheek and we can turn away from the romances and relationships that this world obsesses about, that this world obsesses about. But to do that, to have that renewal of our minds, that then we are transformed, that renewal of our minds where we set our hearts and minds on something like a whole entire cosmic order that is completely invisible and ridiculous to this passing age. It's out of that heavenly obsession the earthly revolution, the revolution of love, really comes.

Speaker 1: 6:39

And I mean sometimes people say I want to be revolutionary. In the main, earthly revolutions are dreadful and do nobody any good. In fact, the people they harm the most are the people in whose name they're supposed to be. You know people say, oh, a Marxist revolution helps the workers. Well, the people, it's them that die in these revolutions and all the security is destroyed by these, these revolutions, and so on. And so revolutions are. To be revolutionary is considered obviously a good thing. No, it's mostly a terrible thing to be a revolutionary. But the one example where it is a good thing is when it's the revolution of love. That's what George Verro always used to be in way, many years, decades ago, he used to talk about this revolution of love and in the 60s people wanted to be revolutionary and he was always saying well, the revolution has to be the revolution of love that's generated by Jesus and empowered by the spirit and kind of sent out from sermon.

Speaker 1: 8:02

This in the last few days was someone who was pointing out the different agendas in churches today compared to in the Acts of the Apostles. In one specific point that in our experience we've we've seen a thing were In the Church of England context. This is not universal to Church of England, but just in one of the schemes that we're aware of there was this huge kind of emphasis that a lot of the time of the church minister should be taken up with what was called community engagement. Engagement and that meant kind of providing food for people who were hungry in the general community not in the church community in the general community, or trying to help people in difficulties in the general community and so on, and the idea was prioritize that, because that's really what church is all about and I guess the emphasis is on and therefore don't spend so much time on the heavenly stuff, the sermons, and you know and literally I've met ministers who spend no time at all anymore on sermons or the business of prayer and Bible study and that the sacraments, the participation in Christ and getting the mind of Christ and what was always traditionally the very center and heart of church life gathering together to feed on him through his word and through his sacraments, that sort of thing is almost considered to be secondary to this community, what is called community engagement.

Speaker 1: 9:59

But in the book of Acts you'll remember that when the um, the apostles, were caught up in dealing with the practical needs of food and the distribution of food, they said no, like we must find others to to share that work with, because we must do the business of the word and prayer, like as if the the top priority for them was the word and prayer, like as if the top priority for them was the word and prayer, and they mustn't, as the church leaders, be giving the majority of their time or a large segment of the time to the practical we could call it the practical care, and that was the practical care of people within the church. And that's what I find challenging. How do we get that balance right? Because you want the minister to be involved in the practical care for people and yet the apostles are saying, yeah, but the business is prayer and Bible teaching, studying the word and teaching that and Bible teaching, studying the word and teaching that and that. That cannot be compromised and therefore we need to share out these roles to enable the church ministers to focus on this, enabling all the church family, yes, to be practically cared for and there to be some overflow of that, even beyond the boundaries of the church community, some.

Speaker 1: 11:29

But the priority, the heart of church life, is this revolution of heart and mind, so that we have our hearts and minds constantly informed and instructed and fed from the kingdom of the heavens, so that we are able to handle our possessions, our money, our time, our attention in this revolution of love. So yeah, and this is very relevant to these kingdoms of this passing world, the hysteria for and against political parties and political leaders from Christians is at best weird and at worst demonic when viewed from the perspective of our Father in heaven. This glorious reality of the kingdom of heaven, that's our obsession, that's what we campaign for, that's the manifesto we live and die for, that's the manifesto we fight for. Our king, our leader. He's the one we are obsessed with telling people about and sharing about him and seeing how other leaders fail to be like him. But he's the center of our attention. All these other leaders are nothing compared to him. Engine, all these other leaders are nothing compared to him.

Speaker 1: 13:11

So the hysteria for and against political parties and political leaders at best weird, at worst demonic when viewed from the perspective of our Father in heaven. But this glorious reality of the kingdom of heaven heaven, god's own cosmic empire, it's a massive theme of the Old Testament also. We looked at it in depth in Matthew's gospel, but it's a massive theme of the Old Testament also and it's important to remember that in this focus on the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the heavens Kingdom is always focused on the Lord, who is the king, and the focus isn't the kingdom as an abstract idea. Now, this is really important for us to grasp that we don't. We are not kingdom people as such, we are king people. It's the king that defines us, that excites us, that we're obsessed about, and the reason his kingdom is exciting is because of him. It's him. So why we must insist on this and keep reminding ourselves and orientating ourselves so our gaze, mental and heart attention is fixed on the king, is that we can.

Speaker 1: 14:39

I've seen this happen, I've done it myself. You start to become obsessed, kind of, with the kingdom as such and lose sight of the king, and then this kingdom can very quickly become completely disconnected from the king and become something that again just disintegrates into the the like a religious version of the kingdoms of this earth. So Well, yeah, it's a problem when Christians sometimes talk in general about quote kind of kingdom principles or quote a kingdom agenda, because, like, what does that mean? What does that mean? What I feel is happening is ideas are being abstracted away from the king and then being used to establish agendas that sometimes never mention Jesus and church and functionally have nothing to do with him. You see it in charities. Actually.

Speaker 1: 15:59

There were charities that long ago were established as authentically Christian charities, based on a love of the Lord Jesus and a desire to support and strengthen church and to enable church or help church to do things that are part of church life, and the language of the foundation documents is often very, very much about Jesus and often filled with scripture verses and things. But then as the decades have gone on and it's it went from being an organization that was passionately driven by people Christian people who were, who had the revolution of love within them, and then they were replaced by people who would say, well, yeah, I know, I believe in those things, but the next generations don't have that obsession with the revolution of love. They sort of agree with the principles in this inverted commas, but don't have the engine that generated that. And then subsequent generations of the charity don't even have that they they. For them, it's now got nothing to do with christ and his kingdom and it's everything to do with kind of earthly agendas of do-goodery and um like in the trying to do good, but are now explicitly sometimes disconnected from Christ and his kingdom and nothing to do with church.

Speaker 1: 17:41

I've seen this and sometimes there's a very cynical thing where the charities know that churches and Christians give generously to these sorts of agendas because the Christians may have that revolution of love driven by the kingdom of heaven, and so they may say I want to give to this because they perceive that to be. And so sometimes I've seen charities that themselves no longer have anything. You know, once we're connected to Jesus and his teaching and vision, but no longer have anything of him in their operation. Or you know they don't. They don't open their meetings in prayer, it's not Christians that are doing the work and they don't even think of that's appropriate. They're like, oh no, that would be totally inappropriate to insist on Christians working here because it's not a Christian thing anymore and so on. But when they send out fundraising material to churches, suddenly they suddenly find verses, usually not so much verses, but they like to put language in fundraising material that's sent to churches so that churches and Christians are given the impression that the charity still is driven by Christ and have some consciousness of him and some care of church and the Bible and the kingdom of heaven. I've seen it. It's incredibly cynical. It's an incredibly cynical move that's done by some very big charities and they'll deliberately pretend that they are what they were once in order to extract funds from Christians and churches, but in their operational life they no longer have any connection to that.

Speaker 1: 19:35

So it is a problem when there's talk in general about kingdom principles or a kingdom agenda, whilst baptising social agendas or even political agendas that have no connection to the Lord Christ, the divine emperor himself, and that's why I really try to avoid any of that abstract language of kingdom that isn't constantly related back to Jesus himself and explicitly to the way scripture talks of him and his kingdom, of him and his kingdom. So the divine king defines the divine kingdom. He is the one who rules over all, and when we trust in him and become disciples of him, we also become citizens of his kingdom, of his kingdom. So it's only really a kingdom matter or a kingdom agenda if it explicitly and directly relates to him, and I think that's important. Having said that, that doesn't narrow the range of what is the kingdom of God? Kingdom of heaven? You know, the title of this podcast tells you that it's the Christ-centered cosmic civilization.

Speaker 1: 20:59

The divine emperor reigns over all aspects of the heavens and the earth, even over the nations, when they refuse to acknowledge him in any way, he still reigns over them. He doesn't require the consent of the earthly nations for him to be the divine emperor over all the nations. He is that. Or even when the nations overtly raise their fists against him, still he reigns in power. We see that very clearly in Psalm 2, when the nations reject the rule of the father through his appointed and anointed son, and they reject the father and the son in that rule.

Speaker 1: 21:46

And yet his response is not to be intimidated by that or the sense of oh, I wish they would be part of my kingdom or anything like that. Rather, the language of Psalm 2 is that he laughs at the futility and emptiness of such a feeble rebellion against his cosmic civilization, when there are hundreds of millions of powerful angels and the matters are you know, our every breath is in his hands, and yet we may raise our fists and be angry and shout abuse at him and people say things like well, they've completely misunderstood. Out of the wickedness of the world and the wickedness of their own hearts, they completely misunderstand what he says or does, and they'll say I can't wait to stand before God and give him a piece of my mind. What is the response of heaven to that Laughter? Really sad, I guess it's sadness that a person has become so deluded and that they genuinely think that they are more righteous than god or something like that. And and instead of thinking god, that's obviously ridiculous. I need to look more deeply, I need to think more. I need help. I need my blind eyes to be open as a no, there's a raising of the fist, but none of that shakes the kingdom of the heavens, the cosmic civilization, because this kingdom of the heavens is overall.

Speaker 1: 23:23

Every aspect of life on Earth is subject to the rule of the kingdom of heaven, from the trees and plants to the weather, to the animals, to the hearts of rulers and CEOs, to so-called influencers and media managers, whatever. Everything can be directed and used, raised up or pulled down, all on the orders of the living God. Who does I love that phrase in the scriptures he does whatever he pleases in the highest heaven. He does whatever he pleases, which doesn't mean he's arbitrary or a tyrant or anything. It means that because if we, if human beings, say this person has a lot of power and he does whatever he pleases, that is a frightening thing to us, because human beings have wicked hearts, so what is it that pleases them? The darkness of the life and depravity is to harm others and abuse others and take from them and so on. But the living God isn't like that, and when it says he does whatever he pleases and no one can question him or say what are you doing and no one can stop him.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Why that's totally different and why it's a good thing is what is it that pleases him? What pleases him? He doesn't need to take anything from us. He doesn't need to use us for his own pleasure or anything like that. None of that is relevant. You know, the Father, son and Spirit shared life together in interdependent joy and lively relationship and communication for endless ages before the universe began, satisfied in one another, in a way like that. So he does whatever he pleases. What does please him?

Speaker 1: 25:32

It's great to look up in Scripture what pleases him, I might. One of my favorite examples of that, of course, is Matthew 11, where it says where Jesus says I thank you, father, that you've hidden these things from those who think they're smart and shown these things to little children and those that have a childlike attitude. Yet this pleases you, this pleases you. So he does whatever he pleases. What does he please to do with this king?

Speaker 1: 26:03

What is this kingdom like? Well, it's a place where people who think too highly of themselves are humbled, and people who are humbled are lifted up and encouraged and helped and given the mysteries of the universe, and so on. Anyway, look, I'd like to be able to dig into some of these Old Testament scriptures. Maybe we could just have one, a dip into one now, or maybe we should save it till the next time. I mean, I'd like to look at some of the Psalms and how the reign of the Lord happens throughout all creation, and not just on earth and not just in the first heaven, but all the way through the second heaven also, and what that looks like, and how the spiritual beings are ordered to stop rebelling against the kingdom of the heavens, and so on. I'll tell you what we won't do it this week, because I realise we've only got a couple of minutes left and I don't want to start on one of these psalms without being able to conclude it properly.