Using Your Key (to the Kingdom)

Dear High Street Family,

Our “Unlocking the Kingdom” series is well underway, it’s been powerful to dig into God’s presence and power available to us now through our relationship with Jesus.

Last Sunday, we learned that even though Jesus as God’s Son had an inherent right as God to the kingdoms of earth, as humanity’s representative, He still had to “take the keys back.”

Click Here to watch last Sunday’s Sermon Unlocking The Kingdom: The Spirit Is Upon Us

Jesus had to be human with all the limits of human frailty so that God could actually be faithful to His first promise that humanity would “rule/reign over” all creation (see Genesis 1:26).  

When Adam and Eve gave away their right to rule over the creation to our Enemy, God wasn’t caught off guard….He had a redemption plan in place. A plan where even as humanity failed, the God-man would not, and in His love, He would fulfill all the broken promises and relational offenses that Adam had introduced at the beginning.

This is why Jesus doesn’t refute Satan when he says to Him, “‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours” (Luke‬ ‭4‬:‭6‬-‭7‬).

Jesus could’ve said, “You’re crazy, it’s already Mine, that’s not a temptation, it’s just a lie.” But the temptation was for Jesus to step into reigning as King over all the Kingdoms as God but leaving humanity in the dust. He would’ve been a good tyrant, a great monarch, but not a Better High Priest who is “able to sympathize with all of our weaknesses…from whom we find grace to help in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

Jesus already had all authority, as God, but in order to give it to humanity, he had to win back humanity’s right to rule from the enemy. And he had to do it in God’s way and only God’s way. This revelation that overturns the darkness is called the Kingdom of God.

Then Jesus says to His followers, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom”(‭Matthew‬ ‭16‬:‭19‬‭‬). 

If Jesus already had the Keys to the Kingdom, he would’ve said “I am giving you the Keys…” But ”I will” indicates His divine intention to die on that cross as a human, the firstborn of all humanity, a full payment for every area of brokenness and sin. Dying the perfect death we could not, so through the Holy Spirit we could be raised with Him.

Jesus died so He could reign as King in our lives, reign with us and through us. His plan wasn’t just “salvation” in our modern sense, but Unlocking His Kingdom-reign in and through us!

What does the Kingdom of God look like in modern day? It’s you. Letting Jesus live through you. Your work. Your family relationships. Your political views. Your task lists. Your dreams and disappointments. Letting Him operate in you as if He really was intimately involved in each of those things that we say He is. 

Think about it:

- What would Jesus as a real estate agent look like?

- What would Jesus as a preschool teacher look like?

- What would Jesus politician look like?

- What does Jesus look like as a husband or wife or friend?

The miraculous realities of the Kingdom of God open us up to the possibility of Jesus living His world changing ways through our ordinary, mundane lives.

And we’ll see this further on Sunday as we study and pray-into His pronouncement of the Kingdom of God arriving as “Good News coming to the poor,” as Hope to the poverty around us and within us.

Let’s prayerfully anticipate all he has for us Sunday!

Pastor Dave