We are going to be continuing the series that we started, looking at Rediscovering the Kingdom. Today we are going to be completing, not just continuing that particular series. Our emphasis in this particular meeting is: Kingdom Invasion and Kingdom Expansion. The Lord began with us looking at the introduction, and then we went into Kingdom Citizenship, Kingdom Culture, and last week, we looked at Kingdom System and Kingdom Structure. So today, we are looking at: Kingdom Invasion and Kingdom Expansion. Now, I want us to open our Bible to Matthew 4:17. The Bible says: “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
“From that particular time…” Now, if we began from verse 1 of Matthew 4, we will understand how Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit, Bible says “to be tempted of the devil.” The question is: what is the essence of the temptation? Who led Him to be tempted? And again, why was He led to be tempted? But returning back from that experience, the Bible says in verse 17 that Jesus from that particular time, haven been led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted, haven received a testimony in the midst of temptation, haven been found without fault in spite of the temptation, the Bible says from that particular time, He began to preach and to say, “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Another word for “repent” is change your thinking, and another word for “it’s at hand” is it is here. The Kingdom of God is here, the question is: how?
There was a time they said to Jesus: “these things that you are doing, you are doing it by the power of Beelzebub” and Jesus was not happy with it. You will notice the way He resisted that statement. He said, “if I by the finger of God…” so the instrument through which He did His miracles were clear; the power, the finger of God. Another word for that is, by the Spirit of God. “If by the Spirit of God, I have done these things, then the Kingdom of God is upon you.” So, Jesus said, “from that moment, repent, change your thinking because the Kingdom of God is upon you.” How? By the Spirit of God that filled Him, by the Spirit of God that led Him, by the Spirit of God that manifested in Him, the Kingdom of God was with them. So, when the Spirit leaves, the Kingdom leaves. He became the carrier of the Spirit of the King, so the Kingdom has actually arrived.
So, from that particular time He did not go to build one big house for Himself. The Bible says “He began to preach and to say repent, change your thinking.” The question is, what is wrong with their thinking? If their thinking was perfect, will they need to change it? So, for every new kingdom or for every kingdom there is a way of thinking. Every kingdom requires thinking; specific and unique thinking pattern. For some of us that could have done some research into different kingdoms that have existed on the earth, from the Medes and Persia; I’m sure we still remember according to the law of Medes and Persia which cannot be altered and there were different kingdoms that came afterwards. There was this Grecian kingdom, the Romans kingdom came, so different kingdoms emerging. There was a time it was the Egyptians that were ruling. If you noticed in these different kingdoms, there were different ways of thinking, different ways of behaving. When we are talking about culture, we say “it is the way of life of the people” and when we say “a people” what we are actually saying is, it’s a way of life of a kingdom.
This afternoon I was greeting my brother, I was singing a Benue song, and when you hear the word Benue, Benue is not a name, Benue is a kingdom. There is the Tiv, paramount ruler of the kingdom and if you trace it very well, the words, the ways, the manner of speaking, the discipline, the attitude of a typical Benue man must flow from the kingdom and through the king. So, if you can go close to the king, you can know why even the kingdom behaves in a manner, and why the people of a kingdom behave in a certain manner. From the king, flows the culture of the people. So, every kingdom has a way of thinking, if the kingdom the people were in was okay, Jesus wouldn’t say “change the thinking.” And by the way, what is the need of introducing a new kingdom, when the old way of thinking was okay? And then, when a new kingdom comes, by virtue of it been new, it comes with a new way of life.
So, Jesus from that time, He said “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is here.” The Holy Spirit has come, gone were the days when you will be saying “God please, when will you solve this our problem?” God has decided to tabernacle. What’s the meaning of Emmanuel? “God with us.” Another word is, “the King of the Kingdom is with us.” He is here. And so, He has not just come to be one of those people just hanging around, He has come to tabernacle, and where He tabernacles, His Kingdom is. Some of us when we get to different places we mix in the crowd; kings don’t mix like that. When a king appears in a place, even though he doesn’t come with a long entourage, people will quickly notice a king has arrived. I was reading in 1Kings, when the queen of Sheba came, the Bible says “she came with a long retinue. She came with a lot of spices, a lot of goods.” So, when she arrived, people knew that a royalty has arrived here. In fact, if she had stayed for a long time, her culture would have started dissipating around the area.
So, when kings arrive in a place, they don’t arrive quietly. Don’t forget, John was to herald the arrival of the King. So, when the Bible says, “he was expected to prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the way of the Lord; announce His arrival.” It was John that began talking to people about this, He said “repent, repent, and bear fruits worthy of repentance.” He was telling them to repent because he knew the King was coming. Now when the King appeared on the scene, the Bible showed us the ceremony that marked His arrival. The Bible says, He was led into the desert to be tempted and when he returned, the Bible says he began to preach. He didn’t say anything until He had done that ceremony. That is what we could call, He had fulfilled all righteousness. Haven fulfilled all righteousness, He knew if this Kingdom He has come into must become His Kingdom, He knew that if this old kingdom must become God’s Kingdom, He needed to invade it, and then He needed to expand His own Kingdom.
So, when He came, being filled with the Holy Spirit, He was carrying the Spirit of the King of heaven. And now He says, “The Kingdom of heaven is here, and so you must repent” He began to preach. So, it impossible for the societies that we find ourselves to change simply because they are just tired of the status quo, somebody must take up the responsibility to preach and to speak, as if they are two different things. The Bible says “He began to preach and to say.” So, you have a responsibility to preach and to say to your generation “repent”. In the book of Matthew 6:8-13; let’s see another pattern that Jesus gave to us to emulate.
“Therefore, do not be like them. For your Father knows the things that you have need of before you ask Him. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
“Your Kingdom come…” if you know the Kingdom is stationary or it’s stationed in one particular place, would you say, it should come? You only ask something that is mobile to come, a fluid entity, you ask it to come. If you know I can never move, would you tell me to come? What do you do? You come to me. There was a point He said “give us this day” it means it must be a daily prayer. If we must be telling God let your Kingdom come daily, it means the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven is very fluid. He says “your Kingdom come, your will be done” because somebody will say “why should His kingdom come, what’s the goal?” The goal is not just for the movement of the Kingdom; the goal is His will been done. He says “your will be done on the earth, as it is in Heaven.” Heaven is a big territory; the earth is a big territory. Inside the earth, lies different cities, different nations, and different kingdoms. Let your will be done in this Kingdom that I Gboyega Adedeji I’m in, as it is in heaven.
So, Jesus said “this is not just my own burden” since they love that the way Jesus was praying, in fact, they loved the result, that Jesus was commanding. They said, “please teach us how to pray” and He said, “in this manner pray, our Father who hath in heaven” our King in heaven; the King of the Kingdom of heaven hallowed be thy name, there is no one like you, your Kingdom come, your will be done in my family, in my city, in my nation as it is in heaven”. So, Jesus therefore made it our responsibility to handover our nations, our kingdoms to Him. Don’t forget we are looking at Kingdom invasion and Kingdom expansion, so it looks as if until a human; you and I voluntarily hand over our nations and our kingdoms to God, He might not intervene, He might not invade, and if He does not invade, there wouldn’t be expansion of the Kingdom to our lives and to our cities.
I was telling my wife yesterday how certain people; that the British government has just created an avenue for about five hundred thousand, Hong Kong people to get visa. The initial thing is that they should get visa and they said after twelve months, they will become British citizens and I was telling her how the whole thing happened. Now, for those people, they have not yet become kingdom citizens, they have not become citizens of the U.K. They desire it, they want it, they don’t want to stay with the other kingdom. We can even see that even on the earth, in things we can relate with, we can see how people can make a choice. These are people who originally had link with the Chinese. But they are saying, “No, we want to begin from now to live with the British.”. Why? There was a time their land was handed over to Britain for hundred years. Britain had invaded their kingdom for hundred years, haven infiltrated them, haven shaped their thinking; they think Western, they do not think Chinese. So, when the hundred years finished, China took over. But China is now struggling to take over a people who think Western. So that their lives will not be doomed, Britain is now making an opportunity for them to become British citizens.
So, kingdoms come with thinking, and it is you and I that have the authority to choose the citizenship that we have or the kingdom that we are of. That must be clear to us. Let your will be done in my nation, in my kingdom as it is in heaven. When a kingdom invades another kingdom without being invited, it could lead to war. But when the people of the kingdom invite a kingdom to come and invade them, it doesn’t lead to war. This is why you and I have a role to play. It is in the place of your preaching, in the place of your teaching that you are able to help men to be open to the Kingdom. Even though the Kingdom is available, it doesn’t still become the experience of everyone, until everyone opens up to the Kingdom. So, according to God’s plan, God needed to redeem us. I’m sure we know that God didn’t bother negotiating with us; going back and forth, before Jesus came, there was a prophecy that the Son will be born, and then when He came, He came. So, we could call that, that the Kingdom has been invaded. But it was invaded for a goal.
I’m sure we still remember in Colossians 1:12, the Bible says “thanks be to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And he concluded with the fact that He has translated us, conveyed us from the Kingdom of darkness, into the Kingdom of His Son, of the Son of His love. One thing we must note is this, there is no human that lacks kingdom. Like somebody could be told, there is no land that is fertile that lacks owner. There is no empty fertile land anywhere. Some people will now say, there is no good woman that is vacant. God is giving you a burden and you are like, “this woman cannot be vacant, let me look for a vacant person,” there is no vacant land. In the world, there is no human that does not belong to a kingdom. When Jesus came, Jesus wasn’t intending that the children of Israel didn’t have Kingdom. He knew they had a kingdom. When the Bible says, “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is here” He is not assuming that there is no kingdom here already. But there is now a presentation to you, that you have been in this kingdom, this is how far your life has been. Is this how you want your life to remain? If you want a better life you can move over to this new Kingdom.
That’s why the Bible says “for God so love the world” the world has a kingdom. You know at the beginning, I mentioned how Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted, the Bible says, by the devil. The same devil we know him to be ruler of the world at the time Jesus came, he was the ruler. Jesus was led to him to be tempted, yet Jesus lived a blameless life to the point that there was no fault found in Him. There was no loophole. He had a testimony against the ruler of this world. So, there is no human that can say the one who rules me is greater than God. You can’t say that. That’s why the Bible says, “greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world.” Because when Christ came, Christ had victory against it. You know the Bible talks about when a strong man has protected his own goods. You don’t go to the goods of the strong man just like that. What you do is to actually go against the strong man. If you are able to bind the strongman, then you are able to get his goods. So, if the people of a kingdom have been sold over to the devil, even God can’t just come and just take them. God has to arrest the devil so that they will be free. That’s what happened. That’s why at a point the Bible says, “if they had known they wouldn’t have crucified the King of glory.”
God knew that the people of Israel have been given over. The Romans were ruling them, different Kingdoms were ruling them, physically and spiritually, they were ruled and oppressed by Satan. So, when Jesus came, He had to confront. Let us go to Colossians 2:14-15, the Bible says: “Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” So, they believed they were persecuting Jesus, they believed they were crucifying Jesus but that was God’s means of destroying them and why God was taking Jesus through all that, it is so that you and I could be free. Imagine God negotiating our freedom individually, see how long it will take. Instead of God saying, “Oh! Francis will be born in the year so, so, and so. All the sins he will commit. Let me negotiate, what shall be the price” that will take God time. But the one who had power, who was oppressing mankind, God dealt with him directly.
You remember when Jesus said “I have the keys” and then in Matthew He says, “all power, all authorities in heaven and earth has been given to me” the question is, how did He get it? This was the means, He was nailed, He was crucified and that became the channel through which God dealt with Satan who was ruling mankind.
So, having defeated Satan, God received victory for each one of us. Do we understand what is going on? Because for many people that want to also do evangelism, instead of also struggling over individual lives, like “this brother is just stubborn, this sister is just stubborn.” How is the brother stubborn? How is the sister stubborn? What has been preventing the brother? What has become a wall around the soul of this sister, this brother, preventing him or her from accessing the truth of God? The Bible says, “the god of this world has blinded them” then what can be done, should we still be negotiating with individual lives or we should be dealing with the god of this world? Should we dealing with the rulers of kingdoms, or should we be dealing with the captives inside the kingdom?
The Bible mentioned in that Colossians, it says, He disarmed the principalities. Verse 15 says, “Having disarmed principalities and powers” because another word for those powers is dominions. Having disarmed the dominions, the powers. So, when He disarmed them, the captives within their kingdom were opened. The Bible says, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He had anointed me. At a point, he says, “to set the captives free…” You can’t set the captives free, if you have not bound or disarmed the principalities that have held them in captivity. The Bible says in Isaiah 42:22, “but this is a people robbed” who robbed them? And plundered, who plundered them? “All of them are snared in holes, they are in prison houses” who keeps them in prison? Do you want to be looking forward to save them one by one, or do you actually bind the one who keeps them in prison? He says, “no one says restores, no one delivers” how will somebody say restore? That’s is why Jesus said “repent” and that’s why sister Tosin will say to someone “repent” repent.
You won’t just say it; you will preach it. You won’t just preach it; you will say it. Repent, change your thinking; it is your thinking that has kept you in captivity. You are held bound by Satan in that kingdom because of your thinking, change your thinking, and as you speak, the power of God is demonstrated in your life. When Peter was invited to the house of Cornelius, the Bible says “as he was speaking the Spirit of God came upon them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” They were all filled. As Peter was speaking, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. So, the Spirit of the Kingdom came upon them, they were ushered into the Kingdom by that experience. So, when we are asking the Holy Spirit to fill a people, we are asking the Kingdom to be extended into them. The Kingdom of God does not come by physical observations. Jesus says, “the Kingdom of God is within you” the Kingdom of God comes in to you by the Holy Spirit. And if the people will receive the Holy Spirit they must be preached to, they must be taught. They must know the truth, they must realize the lies that the devil has used to keep them in darkness, they must be exposed to the word of God. They must know that God didn’t create them for suffering, God didn’t create them to become slaves. God created them to become citizens of His Kingdom. It was their sins that has made them slaves.
Do we still remember the prodigal son? Let’s call him the son of a king. Because the Bible says, “his father wasn’t poor” the man that could kill the fattest calf, who had servants, so let’s call him a king. Let’s call the prodigal son, a prince. He wanted to become a king but he didn’t know that going of his father, he was going to become a slave. You know when we watch Korean film, once a child of a noble gets outside the protection of the parents, what happens? They become slaves. Is that not? No matter how rich your parents are, once they know no more aware of where you are and they cannot protect you, once you get out, you become a slave wherever you go to. And so, where you go to, you can’t even now freely move again, you can’t eat what you like, you can’t do what you like. You are now a forced labor, and yet you are the son or a daughter of a king. Who gave birth to you is not important as long as you have gone out of the space, as long as you have gone out of their protection, as long as you have gone out of their covering?
So, God didn’t create you and I to become slaves, our pursuit of importance, pursuit of relevance, our pursuit of glory took us out into darkness. We thought we were going to reign, but actually we became slaves. The Bible says, “he was eating food that were meant for pigs.” When he came to himself and he said, “come to think of it, even the servants in my father’s house, in my father’s kingdom are living better than I do, let me go back to my father and say, “Father, I’m not worthy to become a prince again, let me just be your servant, because a servant is better than a slave.” That’s to show us that the least you can be in the Kingdom is to be a servant. You can’t be a slave in your father’s kingdom. Do we know that Jesus even though He was the Son, He came to the earth as a servant? Jesus said that “I’m one among you as serves.” That’s why in the Kingdom, a son could serve his father, but a son must never be a slave to his father. Being a slave is not kingdom. You cannot be a kingdom slave if you are Kingdom citizen.
There is a place I also read in 1 Kings, the Bible says, “Solomon made the remnants” I’m sure we remember the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Hittites. The Bible says, “those who remained among them that King David did not chase away, Solomon made them forced labor.” The Bible says “to this day”. But the Bible says, “But no children of Israel were made a forced labor.” That’s it. Citizens don’t become slaves; it is the strangers who have been misdirected. I don’t know what they are looking for. They were wandering the bush, they caught them in the bush, those ones become slaves. So, you too cannot get out of the Kingdom, wandering in the world and yet not want to become slaves, you will serve the interest of men. If you remain in the Kingdom, the least that can happen to you is that you are serving your Father, that’s the least. See what the elder brother said, “Father, I’ve been with you. You didn’t even kill the youngest goat for me” and the Father said, “my son, calm down, all that I have is yours.”
So, when you are preaching the Kingdom, you are speaking about the kingdom, you are teaching the people the reality. Before somebody start saying, “what is in it for me, what is in this kingdom for me?” The question is: what has been in the Kingdom of this world for you? What have you gotten on this earth? All the government that you have submitted to, all the authorities and powers and principalities that rule you, what have they made out of your life? Do we still remember the mad man at Gadarene, he was mad yet he was in the Kingdom, and I want us to meditate on it. He was mad, he was in a kingdom; the king of his kingdom couldn’t heal him. The blind man at the beautiful gate, he was blind, he was a citizen. The king didn’t make him to have eyes. The kings of this world don’t go about treating or healing people, do we know that? Have you seen anyone, since you became a citizen of Nigeria or whichever country you are, does your government just take you and just go and treat you?
But God is so meticulous about even you, that without you going out of your room, God can heal you where you are. God can! So, when we are talking about the Kingdom of heaven, we are talking about the real Kingdom, not the pseudo kingdoms of men. There is a place I want us to see before we, I don’t want us to miss the goal of our conversation. Why we have this confidence. Revelations 11:15, the Bible says: Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”
I’m sure somebody should remember that there was a time the Bible called Satan “the prince of this world or the ruler of this world” and now the Bible says kingdoms of this world, that is, the kingdoms under him, will become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ and He shall reign. So, United Arab Emirate shall become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. United States of Nigeria shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, United Ghana shall become… Because one thing we don’t know is that when we hear, United Kingdom, it is not only United Kingdom that is united or United states that is united, every nation on earth is united. When you go Ghana, you will see the Ashantis; you will see that there is no kingdom, there is no nation that does not have different kingdoms within them. Nigeria has over two hundred and something kingdoms and the languages are even much more. So, there are different kingdoms. People submitted, they voluntarily yielded themselves, either to the fact that they don’t want to be killed, invasion by force or they were cajoled, they were deceived into it, they agreed, and so they form a new nation.
But the Bible says whether they agreed by deception, or they agreed by force, those kingdoms will become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. So, the question is, where is your place? You have the responsibility to pray it daily, and to speak it daily “let your Kingdom come.” In addition to that, you have a responsibility to go to places and to go to platforms and people and to say “repent, repent, you have to change the way you think. You’ve been seeing your life in this manner, your life has been as you have seen it, you have to change the way you see life. You think men can help you, you think government can help you. It’s only God that can help you.” There was a time Jesus asked Peter, “Who do the rulers of this world collect taxes, is it from their citizens or from the strangers?” He said “from strangers” and Jesus said, so their citizens are free. But what happens to today. Don’t get carried away, men may paint God as one who loves money. He asks you for money, you didn’t give Him, He collects all your savings. God is not like that. He says, “the sons are free” that’s it. God is not looking for how to get the last kobo, the last cents in your purse. God is looking for how to make sure you have abundance.
Jesus said, “I have come. The thief comes…”, we should know the thief, the thief is the ruler of this world and you know the ruler of this world cannot sit down in one place and be ruling the world alone, he needs people to rule for him. So, there are many people, many authorities who submit to him and by proxy, he rules through them. So, both the ruler of this world and those who submit to him, they are thieves, they come to steal, to kill and to destroy. But Jesus said “I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.” In case you think what we are saying is only peculiar to us, remember the story of Daniel. Daniel was a captive; he was supposed to be a slave. By divine privilege, he was selected among those who could serve the new king of the kingdom; the king of the kingdom they’ve been brought to. But look at it, would you say Daniel was a servant of that king or a servant of God?
In case you are even confused, the king him said, “Daniel, the servant of the Most High God”. He was working under that kingdom, yet the king of the kingdom even knows that I am not the one that has his loyalty. He is not loyal to me. Of course, he will not break my law; the normal laws that I make. He will be in my kingdom, he will work, but he is loyal to God, that king knew it. Has your God been able to save you? Daniel said, “Yes, live forever oh king. My God actually saved me.” God will save you. Remember the three brothers they said, “we will not bow to you.” The king said, “all of you must bow.” They said, “We will not bow to this image that you have made because our God forbids it” and they knew implication, they will be thrown into this fire, “this fire our God is able to save us from it and even if He doesn’t save us, (see loyalty), we will still not bow.”
So, some of us are thinking, we in this generation, we are the ones in that kind of dilemma, we are in the world but we are not of this world. It’s not only us, people have been in our situation. You are the one that will choose whom you will serve. Will you serve the gods of the Amorites? Why will the children of Israel be serving the gods of the Amorites? Could it be that the Amorites and all those people were lording over them? You remember the days of Gideon when they were invading them, and Gideon was hiding. Could it be that those who lorded them, who invaded them also brought their gods with them? When the Romans came, could it be that they also brought their own gods? But Joshua said, “will you choose this day whom you will serve? Will you serve the gods that have been brought to you or will you serve the Lord God who brought you out?”
There is a song; "…you carry me when some carry their gods.” That’s it. That’s the reality. God is able to carry you, but some people carry their own gods. We are not saying they are not gods, but they are carried by their own people, but God is able to carry you. People fight for gods but God fights for His people. He says, “vengeance is mine.”
When you want to enter a battle and God says, “this battle is not yours, this battle is mine” just go and sleep but some people will fight for their gods. The reason why we have violence on the earth is because many people are fighting for their gods. That’s the reason. Assuming people can allow God or allow those gods to fight for themselves, we will have peace because in reality, they will realize that those gods are powerless. I didn’t read that place, but there is a place we’ve read where we realized that the gods were made by the hands of the people.
So, when you are the one that made something, can that thing you made, can the thing really save you? You made a robot; artificial intelligence, can that artificial intelligence robot actually saves you in the days of troubles? Of course, you could program it to say “wake me up in the morning, tell me good morning” but when you are in deep trouble that the robot doesn’t know, the robot will say “sorry, I have not been programmed.”
I believe you have learnt something!
