THE PRIORITY OF THE KINGDOM!!!!!

Exodus chapter 20




Today we are walking in: The Priority Of The Kingdom!!!!




Today we look to the word-KINGDOM- H4467 mamlâkâh, (mam-law-kaw') -dominion, (abstractly) the estate (rule) or (concretely) the country (realm):—kingdom, king's, reign, royal





The Torah testifies...............





Numbers 32:33




And Moses gave unto them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and unto half the tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph, the kingdom H4467 of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom H4467 of Og king of Bashan, the land, with the cities thereof in the coasts, even the cities of the country round about.




Deuteronomy 17:18




And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, H4467 that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:






The prophets proclaim..................




1 Samuel 10:18




And said unto the children of Israel, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all kingdoms, H4467 and of them that oppressed you:







Jeremiah 18:9




And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom H4467, to build and to plant it;









The writings bear witness...........................





1 Kings 9:5




Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom H4467 upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel.





1 Chronicles 17:11




And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired that thou must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish his kingdom H4467.







THE PRIORITY OF THE KINGDOM




How important is the Kingdom of The Most High Yah? It is so important that our lives depend on it, literally. All that we are, all that we see and hear, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink—this physical world of ours issued forth from the Kingdom of The Most High Yah by His hand at creation. The Kingdom of The Most High Yah is at the center of everything. The Most High Yah’s every action and activity is motivated by His desire and passion to see His Kingdom established on the earth.




How important to the Body of Hamachiach is the message of the Kingdom of The Most High Yah? Frankly, we have nothing else to preach or teach. The message of the Kingdom is good news, and the Church exists to proclaim it. If we are doing our job, everything we are about will be Kingdom-focused: every teaching we teach, every Bible study we teach, every ministry we perform, every activity we accomplish, and every worship service we celebrate.




The Kingdom of The Most High Yah must be our highest priority; Yahusha gave us no other commission. When He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), He was commanding us to proclaim the Kingdom of The Most High Yah to a world that knew it not. Although the world is very familiar with the regimes of men, it is essentially ignorant of The Most High Yah’s Kingdom. People of every nation need to know that The Most High Yah’s Kingdom has come to earth, and that faith in Yahusha Hamachiach as Savior and The Most High is the way in.





THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE WORLDS




We all live in two worlds: a visible, physical world that engages our five senses, and an invisible, spiritual world beyond what we see, feel, touch, smell, and hear in the natural. Many people dismiss the spiritual world as nothing more than superstition. Others acknowledge the existence of the spiritual, but believe it has little or no influence on their lives, or that it is a realm to be manipulated for their own benefit.




In truth, the spiritual world is more real than the natural one. First of all, the spiritual realm is larger than the physical realm, and, second, it is the realm from which the physical world originated. In other words, the invisible produced the visible. All things were created from the mind of a powerful Maker. What He imagined and planned in His mind He brought forth by the power of the Word.




For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him (Col. 1:16, NAS).




Therefore, the physical world reflects the spiritual world from which it came. Whatever we see in the physical world has a corresponding greater reality in the spiritual world. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul addressed this duality of worlds in his effort to encourage his readers to look beyond their current temporary troubles to see the bigger picture beyond:




Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:16-18).




Because it is eternal, the invisible spiritual realm is more real than the visible physical realm, which is only temporary.




The Most High Yah’s original purpose for creating the visible world was to establish His invisible Kingdom in that visible world— to manifest the spiritual in the physical. His plan for accomplishing this called for children who would inhabit visible physical bodies. For this reason He created man in His own image. He created them spirit, soul and body with the capacity to communicate with both realms, the realm of the spirit and the realm of the physical.





CREATED TO BE KINGS IN THE MOST HIGH YAH’S WORLD




The Most High Yah created us as spirit “men,” put us into physical bodies, some male and some female, placed us in a visible, physical world that He had created and said, “Dominate this for Me.” In this way, The Most High Yah planned for us to rule and exercise control over the earth in His name. Through us, His rule of the heavenly Kingdom would be extended over the earth.




We were created as administrators of The Most High Yah’s Kingdom on earth. It’s that simple. Adam was the first, the prototype. Next came Eve, whom The Most High Yah fashioned from a part of Adam’s side, and who ruled with Adam as a helper and equal partner. From them descended everyone who has ever lived or ever will live—an entire race of beings designed originally to dominate the physical realm so that the Kingdom dominion of The Most High Yah could cover the earth.




Adam and Eve disobeyed The Most High Yah and thereby forfeited their Kingdom rights. HaSatan, an interloper and outcast of Heaven, illegally usurped the throne that they abdicated, wreaking havoc ever since in the hearts and lives of people everywhere in every generation. He confuses our minds and blocks our ability to see The Most High Yah so that we neither know Him and what He is like, nor understand ourselves and who we are as children created in His likeness.




Because we are made in The Most High Yah’s image, our hearts cry out for Him. But since our sin has separated us from Him and we cannot see Him, all we can do is reach out and fashion The Most High Yahs of our own making according to our own flawed understanding. Cut off from The Most High Yah, our source, we live lives characterized by fear, hopelessness, and despair. Worst of all, we live in fear of the One who created us to be like Him, who loves us with an undying love. We are all victims of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. They hid from The Most High Yah out of fear, and we do the same, each in our own way. We inherited their sinful nature, becoming sons of disobedience as much as they.





A LITTLE HELP FROM HEAVEN




What could we do? In our fallen state we were helpless. Nothing that we might do in our own power would be sufficient to restore us to The Most High Yah’s favor and to our former position. We needed help that only The Most High Yah could provide. That’s why He sent Yahusha Hamachiach, His only begotten Son— the second “Adam”—to undo the curse brought upon mankind by the first Adam. What the first Adam, the son of disobedience, lost, the second “Adam,” the Son of obedience, restored. In a very real sense, this is like being raised from the dead: we who were spiritually dead in our sin have been brought to new life in Hamachiach, the second Adam. Paul explained it to the Corinthians this way:




But Hamachiach has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Hamachiach all will be made alive.... So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;” the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:20-22,45).




Adam lost the Kingdom; Yahusha restored the Kingdom. Adam did not lose heaven, because he was never in heaven; he was formed from the dust of the ground. Heaven was not Adam’s home, and neither is it ours— ultimately. For believers, heaven is a waiting place until The Most High Yah’s plan is fully consummated, but it is not our final destination. Heaven is a real place, the spiritual domain where The Most High Yah rules, but don’t forget that He gave the earth to man as our domain to rule in His name: “The highest heavens belong to the The Most High, but the earth he has given to man” (Ps. 115:16).

What the first Adam, the son of disobedience, lost, the second, “Adam,” the Son of obedience, restored.




Ever since Adam’s fall, The Most High Yah has been executing His plan to restore mankind to his place of dominion. Nothing takes The Most High Yah by surprise; nothing catches Him unprepared. The Most High Yah announced His plan for man’s restoration in the same chapter of the Bible that describes man’s fall. Speaking judgment on Hasatan, that wily serpent who tricked mankind into sinning, The Most High Yah said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel” (Gen. 3:15).




Here the word head stands for authority. By their failure to stand up to satan and use their Kingdom authority to defeat him, Adam and Eve lost that authority. The Most High Yah promised, however, that the day would come when another would arise, an offspring and descendant of the woman, who would crush Hasatan’s authority, take back the power he stole, and restore the scepter of earth’s domain to man, its rightful holder. That offspring was Yahusha Hamachiach.





THE SON OF MAN AND THE ANCIENT OF DAYS




When Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the giant statue, he told the king that the kingdoms of men, represented by the statue, would be crushed and that the The Most High Yah of Heaven would establish in their place an eternal Kingdom under His rule. This Kingdom was represented in the dream by the rock not cut by human hands that shattered the great statue:




In the time of those kings, the The Most High Yah of heaven will set up a Kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces (Dan. 2:44-45a).




Furthermore, this eternal Kingdom would be established on the earth by a divine person whom Daniel referred to as a “son of man”:




In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed (Dan. 7:13- 14).




This “son of man” came with the “clouds of heaven,” which is a reference, not to literal clouds in the sky, but to hosts of angels. The son of man is led into the presence of the “Ancient of Days,” another name for The Most High Yah the Father. Who is this “son of man”? For over 500 years, from the days of Daniel to the days of Yahusha, the Hebrews regarded the term “son of man” as a reference to the Messiah, the Anointed One whom The Most High Yah would send to deliver His people. As the four Gospels in the New Testament make clear, Yahusha adopted the term for Himself. “Son of Man” was Yahusha’ preferred self-designation.




It is no wonder that Yahusha angered so many of the religious leaders of His day. They knew the prophecies of Daniel. When they heard Yahusha call Himself the “Son of man,” they understood that He was identifying Himself with the heavenly figure of Daniel 7:13-14, who appeared before the Ancient of Days to receive the “everlasting dominion.” By so identifying Himself, Yahusha was claiming to be the Messiah, the anointed Son of The Most High Yah.




We know Yahusha as the Son of The Most High Yah, which He is. Why did He prefer the title “Son of man”? A passage in the fifth chapter of John’s Gospel gives us a clue. It was the Sabbath, and Yahusha had just healed a blind man at the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. To the religious leaders, this constituted work, a violation of Sabbath law.




So, because Yahusha was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted Him. Yahusha said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling The Most High Yah His own Father, making Himself equal with The Most High Yah. Yahusha gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does (John 5:16-19).