Kingdom Insights 
The Golden Thread. Woven through the warp and woof of His Kingdom and Us is a series of boxed Kingdom Insights relevant to the material on and in the vicinity of specific pages. These insights tend to build on one another and may have links within them to more detailed expositions of the Insight being highlighted. You can navigate sequentially through these by using the left and right arrows in the header.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #1
Creation. Before the creation of time and space, the revelation of light and darkness, and the appearance of matter and energy, God existed. When Moses inquired who God was, he was told to tell the people of Israel “I AM WHO I AM.” Our foundational belief is that our Creator God exists and, as the writer of Hebrews 11:3 confessed, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #2
Time. As C.S. Lewis has said, “If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one… God from above or outside or all around, contains the whole line, and sees it all.”
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #3
Space. Space is in us and all around us, in our very molecules, the air we breathe, the sky overhead, the expanse that includes the moons, planets, stars, and galaxies, and far beyond. In Biblical Greek the word for this entire reality is οὐρανός, which is most often translated “heaven” or “the heavens.” We are truly immersed in God as Paul noted in Acts 17:28 when he declared, “In him we live and move and have our being.”
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #4
Order. The Universe was created by God in every loving detail all the way from subatomic entities to the vast expanse of heavenly bodies. He is the King of the Universe who has made an orderly Kingdom and guides it according to intricate laws ordained for man to discover and apply in exercising fruitful stewardship. Where are we?
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #5
The gift of free will. Yes, we can choose – obedience and life or disobedience and death. Are we called to be pro-choice? Yes. We are called to choose life. The alternate is sin, conceived and birthed in pride and inevitably ending in a fall that leads to corruption and death.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #6
God’s Timing. We’ve already seen that the God of the Universe, who dwells in Eternity, has a rather elastic way of dealing with the dimension of reality that He created called Time. He doesn’t always measure “a day” as the time it takes for our earth to complete one rotation on its axis (as if this has always been the same). Nor does He necessarily number epochs in accordance with our tidy conceptual ways of subdividing human history. We need to exercise great caution when we try to fit Him and His Ways into boxes of our own creation: His ways are higher than ours, and we are bound to leave important understandings out if we get too clever.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #7
Divine Revelation. God communicates with people by a process mediated by the Holy Spirit called “revelation.” Our thinking is a spiritual process that is influenced (thoughts and ideas enter into our minds) as we observe our surroundings and ponder about what is going on. Those who seek answers from God and are open to receive from Him find that they are able to discern realities that would otherwise be obscure. Most people are unwittingly receptive to “general revelation” by common grace, much of which is perceived as “self-evident truth” or “common sense.” Occasionally less common insights are received in more dramatic ways by “special revelation” that pertain to God’s specific plans. Other physical, social, and spiritual forces are at play in our thought life, however, calling for careful discernment.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #8
The Church. We all think we know what we mean by church. It’s a religious organization, usually Christian of some sort, that has structured leadership, a place of religious activity, and members who support it financially and with their participation. It could have priests or ministers, an altar inside and steeple outside, and a set of beliefs. We go to church. In the Bible the underlying Greek word for “church” is “ekklesia” which means “the called out ones” and has nothing to do with a building or structure. It’s all about people who have heard the call of God to come out of their thralldom to the world and and become united in following Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Inside our “church” buildings we have those who have been “called out” in this way and others who haven’t. Which group do you belong to? And when you come across the word “church” in your Bible reading, try substituting “ekklesia” for it and see how it changes the meaning for you.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
Kingdom Insights #20
The Universe was created by an infinitely intelligent designer who established it all in loving detail – from the vast expanse of heavenly bodies down to subatomic entities – and holds it together in order, guided by intricate laws ordained for man to discover and use in exercising fruitful stewardship.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
The Appointed Times
Calendar. We all think we know what we mean by church. It’s a religious organization, usually Christian of some sort, that has structured leadership, a place of religious activity, and members who support it financially and with their participation. It could have priests or ministers, an altar inside and steeple outside, and a set of beliefs. We go to church. In the Bible the underlying Greek word for “church” is “ekklesia” which means “the called out ones” and has nothing to do with a building or structure. It’s all about people who have heard the call of God to come out of their thralldom to the world and and become united in following Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Inside our “church” buildings we have those who have been “called out” in this way and others who haven’t. Which group do you belong to? And when you come across the word “church” in your Bible reading, try substituting “ekklesia” for it and see how it changes the meaning for you.
“The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” Psalm 103:19
The Appointed Times #1
Sabbath. The first of Appointed Times set aside in Leviticus 23 commemorates God’s creation of the universe in six days, culminating with the creation of mankind on the Sixth Day, Then Genesis says that on the Seventh Day, God rested. Although the weekly Sabbath is technically not a festival in the sense that the others listed in Leviticus 23 are, it was first set aside in Exodus 20:8-11 as the 4th Commandment to be kept faithfully by God’s people..
“So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Genesis 2:1-3
The Appointed Times #2
Passover. Passover (פֶּסַח), the oldest and most important of Jewish religious festivals, celebrates God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and his creation of the Israelite people. Jesus fulfilled the Passover when he instituted the Lord’s Supper during the Seder and was sacrificed the following day as the Paschal Lamb for the sins of mankind.
“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD’s Passover.” Leviticus 23:5
The Appointed Times #3
Shavuot. Shavuot is the Hebrew word for “weeks” and refers to the Biblical “Feast of Weeks” which marks the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai exactly seven weeks after Passover (and Easter). Jesus invited the disciples to gather and wait in Jerusalem during the Shavuot observance to received the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, which fell right on Pentecost Sunday.
“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD’s Passover.” Leviticus 23:5