We continue following Christ in the Greatest Life Ever Lived series and within that we have the mini-series on the Kingdom of God.

Now, remember we were talking about the fact that the Kingdom of God is not seen with the eyes, per se. It doesn’t have geographical boundaries like a city or a country, but there are boundaries to it, because the Bible says you can either enter it or miss it. You can enter it or miss it.

But you may ask, what about us Christians? Can we miss it?

Absolutely.

We can? But we say, “We know Christ!”

Well, see there’re two kingdoms – there’s an earthly kingdom and a heavenly kingdom and when Jesus comes again, we’ll get ushered into the heavenly kingdom where we’ll be forever. That’s our real home.

Now, we’re here passing through, but there’s yet an earthly kingdom where people like you and me become ambassadors for Christ. We start seeing things the way God sees them. We become a representative of the words of God through which the Lord can heal, forgive, counsel, give wholeness to and give the kingdom through us.

There are a lot of people who’re opting for the second kingdom saying “Oh, well I’ll be in heaven one day,” and meanwhile they miss the whole thing here.

Can we, really?

Absolutely!

Let’s review this scripture together:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.” (Matt. 7:21)

You see, we can live a whole life here and sort of miss it. Scribes did and they knew Scripture, but they missed it. You can tell when people do not know if someone they know went to Heaven or not.

Like, I’ll go to some funerals and you’ll hear a pastor say something like, “Joe Blow here – he’s flying with angels now” and I think, “ahh you don’t know where he is now, do you?”

It’s because they speak in generalities.

I want it to be that when it’s our turn to lay there in that funeral home that everyone says or thinks “I know, I know, I know where he or she is today.”

There are many people of whom I’d feel really confidant saying, “Oh, they’re in heaven today.” Like Mother Theresa. I know, I know, I know that woman is in heaven today.

Also Martin Luther, the Christian reformer from the fifteen hundreds. I know, I know he’s in Heaven. I’ve no problem with that at all. There’s the great evangelist, Billy Graham, and I know, I know where he’ll be going, too.

I just want to make sure that we have the confidence. Let’s go back to the Old Testament and get some context into what we’re going to be talking about.

Here’s what we’re going to be talking about – I want us to develop a new way at looking at life. I call it a frame of reference. This is going to happen little by little. God is just little by little going to be developing in us a Biblical frame of reference through which we see life.

Because before you come to Christ – you’ve had your mentality, your frame of reference developed by your friends, peer pressure and maybe mostly television.

Did you know that?

Television and movies give us our morals – the way we see things, the way we treat people. It has taught us what is good and what’s not good.

I call it a frame of reference or our philosophy. If you go to a Bible college or a theology school, they’ll call it a Biblical world view or a secular world view. When you and I come to Christ, our spirit is saved, but we still bring in a secular world view. We’ll look at things the old way. That has to be changed. And the Bible says He’s going to be renewing the spirit of your mind.

“The lamp of your body is your eye. It’s going to be really important that you see clearly. The lamp of your body is your eye. If the eye is clear, the whole body will be filled with the light. But if your eye is dark, your whole body will be filled with darkness. And if that light within you is darkness, how great shall that darkness be?” (Matt 6: 22-24.)

In other words, you can be a person saved, but see everything weird - because you haven’t yet renewed your frame of reference.

Now, how’s God going to do that? Little by little. He’ll be putting together a new frame of reference by putting a command here, a promise here, the way God sees it here, the way God plans it there.

He puts all these little dots, these coordinates and little by little, he starts connecting the dots for you. And then you realize… oh that’s how I’m supposed to see things. Yeah, the old frame of reference has to die.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

It’s a whole new way of seeing life. Remember, when you come to Christ, you still have a secular frame of reference and God is going to, little by little, develop a new frame of reference.

If you try to put God into an old way of seeing things, He won’t fit. It will make things really conflicting and very confusing. That’s why a whole lot of people say whoa, it was so much easier being a non-Christian.

Why? Because everything matched. Your secular world view and your lifestyle were in sync. But it doesn’t now, huh? Because you’re spirit is saved and now you have to get your frame of reference correct.

So how does He do that?

Here it is in the Old Testament. We’re in Deuteronomy 2 and the Lord is giving a command. His commandments are like the stars in the night, like constellations, that until you see the dots connected or see how the commandments relate to the Kingdom of God, you can’t quite make out what He is saying.

But, little by little, God is going to give you a new way of seeing things. Now, there’s going to be some laws that He put together in the Old Testament are pretty constricting. He did so because in those days, the people of Israel were so apt to stray or run off – to do their own thing – so God had to put some borders in to say, “No, stop. See it this way”.

After a while God would loosen it up, but if you don’t get it together, you’re always going to have a wanderlust heart.

And so, He put some laws in place, and they were constrictive. Now, God in the New Testament, in the shape of Jesus, continues to give you and me little coordinates so that we start to see things so much more differently.

As people of the kingdom of God, we tend to see things differently than the people of the world. If you are saved but you still see things the way the world sees them, you are called a “carnal Christian.”

Will you make it to Heaven? You probably will, but will you make it on Earth?

No.

You’ll miss the kingdom on Earth, and what God is saying is that He wants you to have not only more life, but more abundant life.

Not only a quantity of life, but a quality of life, and it’s going to require us to see things more differently, otherwise you’ll be a carnal Christian yearning for the things of the world, because we haven’t changed our frame of reference.

So, in the Old Testament, God starts giving them commands, and then in the New Testament he says things like “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God”, “Blessed are those who hunger after righteousness for they shall be filled”,  “Blessed are those who mourn”. In doing so, He gives a gradual new way of seeing things.

Ok, so now you can start to see things and then little by little, He starts connecting the dots. Some of the laws in the Old Testament Jesus would not have abolished, He will have fulfilled. Now you gotta catch this… In the Old Testament, there were different kinds of laws.

There were sacrificial laws that Jesus fulfilled because they were supposed to sacrifice a sheep or a lamb, but Jesus was the sacrificial lamb, so did he abolish that law?

No, he fulfilled it.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them... anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:17-20).

The dietary laws were fulfilled as were many other types of laws.

When you are “in Christ,” you are going to see God develop a new frame of reference for you and for me, and He does that with the laws.

Now some people say to me, “Wayne, I wish God would change His laws a little bit because people out there in the world do this and that and there is no law against it.”

How come we are not supposed to do it? Why doesn’t God just bend His laws and change them for us, because we are in a new society?

What I am about to share with you – I hope it blows your mind, because you do not want God to change his mind for you and me. What God put in place needs to be solid and immovable.

Why?

Well, if God changed His laws…. Think of it like gravity. If God changed the law of gravity, where would we be?

I want to talk to you a little about how we obey God’s commands and how sometimes we shake our fists and say “how come I can’t just keep the secular mindset and still be a Christian?”

That thinking will rip you apart. The people of the kingdom must choose, but before we go that way, let me show you first how great our God is.

God created us on this small piece of this little planet and said “I love you.” Oh my goodness, that should make us fall on our knees and cry out in forgiveness. You begin to get a new frame of reference when you consider how far away the sun is from Earth and it’s incredible to think how incredible the power of God is.

Everything in God’s creation obeys Him –except his creation. Think about it. Who are we to raise our fists up to such a mighty God? Sometimes we want to hold onto our secular frame of reference, but the Lord says, “Oh no, no, don’t do that.”

Because God is little by little developing a brand new frame of reference inside of us.

And you’ll see it in the New Testament as God continues to tell us to live an exceptional life.

How does he do it?

Well, we’re going to discuss a few of them now, and you’ll see how Jesus continues to give us little coordinates in our frame of reference.

1. Little by little, God is developing a biblical FRAME of REFERENCE.
Jesus goes beyond the old Law by saying, “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder...’ but I say unto you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court” (Matt. 5:21-22) and “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28).

We need SOLID framework because we will not always have a heart to serve God.

2. Living exceptionally means we understand that we are not PURCHASABLE.

In other words, we will not sell out our morals. We will be faithful to our Christian beliefs no matter what the price. The rest of the world may bend or break but you’re different and that why this message is called “living exceptionally.” But you might say,

“Wayne, sometimes that Biblical framework is so restricting; can’t we just change it out and get a little freedom here?”

Wrong question, because as soon as you ask it, I know the problem is a wanderlust heart.

Remember, it only took God a little while to get the Israelites out of Egypt, but it took a whole generation to get Egypt out of the Israelites.

Do you know what God is doing when he puts a constrictive law or a framework around

you for a while?

Because your heart is not “there” yet, God wants to wrap his arms around you as if

you were an unruly child not willing to listen. God is going to hold you and hold you until you give in, and He is doing this because God loves you so much.

We’ll want God’s embrace around us because

3. God is developing our HEART for obedience.
   “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart...” (Rom. 6:17)
   “When the Lord your God expands your borders as He has promised you...” (Deut. 12:20)
   “He who is faithful in little is faithful also in much; but he who is unrighteous in little shall be unrighteous also in much.” (Luke 16:10).

God wants to give us a new frame of reference. He set up the commands to see if we are faithful, and once we are, He gives us some freedom and we see things in a broader viewpoint, but you have to be obedient to God and then He’ll let you see more and more.

And when you do so, you’ll start to see things from God’s perspective and not through

dark secular eyes that miss the whole kingdom. One practical area is morality – or immorality when we, for example, see a couple living together and ask why can’t we?

You see what’s happening is evangelicals are more and more often buying into the mainstream, secular way of doing things.

Remember, “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18).

When it comes to things like pornography available for purchase on the Internet and

elsewhere, don’t be for sale – don’t be purchasable to the enemy. Don’t let pornography make you a slave to the Devil, who will put a price on your head because you are sellable.

4. Remember, you were BOUGHT with His sacrifice.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

The Lord God says we have to steward our body because it is not ours, it is His. The

commands that He has for you are for a good life. These things that happen may seem as random as the stars in a constellation, but the more you understand them, the more you read them, and the more you put them in your heart. Well pretty soon, the Lord is going to start connecting the dots and you’ll look through this frame of reference and see the glory in the heavens, and the God who is exalted in the heavens and you will say, “Holy God, oh my goodness, this is fabulous. Lord I am enthralled and I exalt thee”.

And we will look at life and we will say that now I am beginning to understand. Then the Lord says, now watch this I am going to show you just the borders of everything that I have because your heart is now my heart – and it is no longer you – but Me living in you.

And then we become a people of the kingdom and that’s the kind of people we want to be. Can we say amen to that?

QUESTIONS:

· In Matthew 6 it says “The lamp of your body is your eye. If the eye is clear, the whole body will be filled with the light. But if your eye is dark, your whole body will be filled with darkness.” How can you make your eye clearer?

· As a Christian, God is developing a new frame of reference for you and me. What are you doing with your life to make this happen?

· How are you helping God develop your brand new frame of reference?