Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.
Christ was clear when He announced His Good News vision to a broken, unstable world… a New Kingdom had arrived in His coming to this world (Mark 1:15). It was God’s plan to introduce a new Kingdom with Christ as King that would overtake, replace, reconcile (2 Corinthians 5:19) the kingdoms of this world. When the Scriptures talk about this world they are usually talking about a world that has chosen to ignore God and do their own thing. It is describing a system that has rebelled against God’s ways and the net results of a worldly system is sickness, greed, immorality, injustice, abuse, pride, wars, selfishness etc. A world or system built without God is very fragile, broken and very unstable.
Most of us would agree that this world is being shaken. The instability of our current world as it wrestles with this COVID Virus epidemic is a very sobering reminder to us all that this world is sick. Jesus was very aware that trouble would be the only constant thing we can guarantee while we live in this world. But His comforting message is to “take heart! I have overcome the world!” ’(John 16:33). He has overcome the world through His life, death and ultimately resurrection which demonstrated His capacity to overcome death. Jesus’ close friend, John, goes on to remind us that “everyone born of God overcomes the world…who is it that overcome the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” (I John 5:4-5)
The Kingdom that Jesus introduces and is continuing to build will overcome all the trouble, struggle, sickness, evil, injustice, sadness, depression, hostilities that daily reveal the instability of this world. But Christ’s alternative Kingdom is unshakeable!
Since we live in anticipation of it being fully manifest when Jesus comes again we can live with confidence, peace and hope in the world around even when showing its true condition of instability and fragility. Christ’s unshakeable kingdom is the inheritance as God’s people and since that is our inheritance we have much to be grateful for and can focus our energy on worshiping God in fear and awe… and all the more when the world around us is falling apart!
