Violence in The Kingdom of Heaven

The Battle for The Kingdom

There is a war that is brewing right beneath our feet. The battle is decades old but today its coming to a culmination.

Many of us have heard this war cry before. Today the beating of that drum beats louder than ever before.

You feel it in your bones, you sense it in your heart, your mind tells you its coming but Spirit in the Christ follower is dead asleep. Its easier to look like this world than it is to be as Christ.

Around the world in 2019, 5,500 Christian Churches were confiscated or destroyed by a force that wants to see the Christian Nation eradicated. Outright persecution resulted in the physical attacks and death threats of 1445 Christians but in Nigeria alone the slaughter of 1350 Christians occured just because they believed in Christ.

Here in America we could not be more content. We live in the most free country in the world. What have we to worry about? Qoleth in Ecclesiastes would argue that we should eat, drink , and be merry after all anything more or anything less is vanity right?

Except here is the issue… in 2019 we came across a disheartening statistic where as a whole America had at one time the most amount of Christians today less than 48 percent are professing believers. It gets worse where the elder generation has an 84% of their population are believers, the millennials coming into full adulthood now only carries a 47% of believers.

We do not have outright persecution but would be foolish to think that Christians even in America are not under assault. Today we are considered by many a faith of divisiveness that is homophobic xenophobic and in many cases racist. Its becoming a capital sin to be a Christia… no not just a Christian but a true Follower of Jesus Christ.

The religious neither commits nor allows others to commit. Yet there is a group the Lord today is raising up who will not bend the knee, and will not surrender.

Matthew 11:12 ESV

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

Context to go through

Jesus is asked if He is the Messiah

Jesus points out His fruits

Turns to the people and explains this little interesting tidbit

References how they were the children in the market who would not come

We are made aware of a violence

In passive Attacks the Kingdom and those entering the Kingdom

In the middle Must be taken by force by the forceful and is advanced forcefully

The Violence Continues in to our time

The Church is in an all out assault and needs to stand firm to conquer what is before us.

The Opposition to the Kingdom of Heaven

In this verse Jesus highlights the violence to John the Baptist and what was to happen to Him

JTB didn’t usher in the Kingdom but started announcing it

Jesus presented it and gave charge to His disciples to do just the same

Their shared fate was death.

The context here explained is the forcible objection to the Kingdom which was prophesied.

There was internal and external opposition

King Herod kills JTB

The Jews along with the political powers at be have Jesus killed.

Matthew 11:18–19 ESV

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

The generation of Jews that were present could not accept John the Baptist he was a radical prudish freak, Jesus on the other hand come to disestablish the current religious system.

The External Opposition

Ephesians 6:11–12 ESV

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

There is a Spiritual Battle and you are right in the middle of it

Emphatically put it on

Cosmic powers over this present darkness

As we breathe there is a force that wants to see your Spirit destroyed

here on earth

Against Spiritual forces of evil in the Heavenly Places

this is a part of the violence in Heaven.

The enemy of your soul wants you destroyed.

This is the battle you do not see with the physical eye.

The Internal Opposition

Matthew 23:13 ESV

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

Jesus decries a woe to the religious people who were stuck in flaccid and empty religious traditions

This issue carries with it two charges

You do not enter yourselves

false teachers

not committed to doctrines of Christ

Love the sound of their own voice but despise the voice of the Holy Spirit

You do not allow who would enter to go in.

False teachers and others who despise the word of the Lord

Deny your ability to learn

Teach false platitudes

Dare to falsely challenge the call of God on people’s lives.

In the United States this is our greatest threats false unbiblical teachings that sound more like a self help seminar than they do the word of God. The erosion it has caused to the church is it has left many congregations full of people but devoid the Spirit of God who has long ago departed from the pulpit.

The Champion of Heaven

Matthew 10:34–36 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Today we are witnesses to some of the greatest threats to the kingdom. There are institution who progress a liberal theology and suppress the voice of the ones who will not sell out....

Where is our champion? where is our help?

In this time of battle where is our rescue?

Psalm 118:7–14 ESV

The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. All nations surrounded me; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! They surrounded me like bees; they went out like a fire among thorns; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.

While there is a violence in the kingdom of heaven there is a champion in heaven who is fighting for us… Even in the middle of the chaos He has come to set us free, that we would stand and push back against an enemy that is intent on seeing our soul destroyed