Kingdom Principles – Part 3: A Well-Watered Garden – The City
The Kingdom of God is the redemptive and restorative rule of God manifested in Christ, active across time and space through the power of the Holy Spirit, to defeat the power of Satan and to bring the blessings of God’s reign to mankind. The Kingdom of God is the Gospel. There is no other true Gospel.
The Kingdom of God is both future and present. God’s restorative work will be complete in the future, when Christ returns in glory. Then all believers will be resurrected on the restored, redeemed earth where there will be no more tears, no more crying or pain, and no more death. We will live for eternity.
But we don’t have to wait to begin experiencing the first fruits of that age to come; the future is here now, although not in it’s fullness. The life of heaven is available to us now. Hallelujah!
These more theological definitions of the Kingdom of God are necessary, but since first reading about the Kingdom of God five or so years ago, I began to think of the Kingdom as a well-watered garden. Later I read that the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, heaven (here now, not just when I die), eternal life, salvation, and the Garden of Eden are essentially synonymous. Of course, not a physical garden, but a garden in which my spirit, my heart, and even my mind are free to roam in a place of protection, freedom, abundance, and intimacy with God. It is in this garden that I could find my voice – the words that God wants me to use to proclaim His glory. It was in the garden that I could best hear God’s voice to me. From life in this garden, I was free to interact with people around me, sharing the Good News of the Kingdom, and interacting with grace, love, and an unoffendable heart (as those of you who know me, not perfectly, for sure). It is in this Garden, this Kingdom, that human beings know real life, freedom, and hope. Outside of the Garden, there is no real life.
There are many passages in Scripture that use well-watered gardens to evoke places of blessing. One of my favorites is from Isaiah 58: 12, 13 – a passage some commentators think Jesus is referring to when He stood on the steps of the Temple and said “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7: 38 NIV).
As Jesus tells us in John 7, water in Scripture refers to the Holy Spirit. Some places where water points to the Spirit are Psalm 1, Isaiah 58, Ezekiel 47, and Revelation 22. But my favorite passage is from Jeremiah 17, where the prophet contrasts a man who lives in the kingdom of self with a man who lives in the Kingdom of God, as I interpret the passage. If The Rich Young Ruler and Bartimaeus are New Testament examples of these two kingdoms, this passage in Jeremiah is the Old Testament comparison.
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on the flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands: he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will live in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
But blessed in the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out it roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17: 5 – 8).
“Cursed” is the man who depends on himself – ‘cursed’? , really? Strong words. “Oh, I get it. Jeremiah is the Old Testament guy. No way this applies to us living under the New Covenant. Those OT guys were really harsh.” I don’t believe this – I think the metaphor of the wasteland vs. the garden is correct.
This first part of the passage speaks to me of the emptiness of life when I depend upon my power – the power of self – for strength. Strength for what? Strength for everything and anything. Strength to heal myself. Strength to heal or fix a relationship. Strength to fix a church, a city, a nation. We might call ourselves the Church, but when we believe that we can cure social ills with money, our compassion, our love, or our time apart from the Kingdom, we are relying on our strength.
Most fundamentally, when we live in the wasteland, we are relying on our strength, our efforts, and our work to find the one essential element we need for life: significance. We can use other words to describe this essential element: acceptance, value, worth, or relevance. Everything we do, think, and say grows out of this one essential need. When we rely on our strength, our ‘flesh’, our efforts to meet this need, we will live in the desert. We will be like a stunted bush.
This applies to individuals, churches, and nations. Certainly, there are times to operate in our experience, wisdom, and by our efforts. But if these things are not rooted in the Kingdom of God, if they are not done in accordance with God’s will and in God’s power, they will always corrupt our lives and the lives of the people for whom we are working. That is what the Scripture is telling us and it is as relevant today as it was in Jeremiah’s time.
What do we need to do to cure the ills of the City in America? How do we combat crime, illiteracy, poverty, addiction, corruption, the collapse of the family structure, human trafficking, or homelessness, which are all characteristics of the wasteland that Jeremiah describes? Do we teach children to read before they are 9? Do we send the Church into the schools to love and mentor these kids (without mentioning Jesus, which is not allowed), do we feed the homeless, help the prisoner reintegrate into society with money, clothes, and IDs? Sure, the Church needs to do these things. But they will not solve the ills of the city. This is because the destruction of our Cities and our Nation is rooted in spiritual darkness. Church, do you really think you can make a difference without relying on the power of God? Without the power of God, released through the Kingdom of God, we are the same as secular organizations. How much money has the secular bureaucracy poured into schools over the last 2 generations? Billions. Are we any better off today? We are still dealing with the same problems, except they are worse.
We have made education our God! And idols have no power.
Much of the Church in America is deluding itself. It believes that saying “I am feeding you in the name of Jesus or I am giving you a hand-up out of poverty in the name of Jesus” is the same thing as actually doing something in the Name of Jesus. While Jesus is not unmoved by poverty and homelessness, He is more concerned with setting people free from the dominion of darkness – living in slavery to sin (sin as defined as a crouching lion ready to pounce – the demonic). The Church can do this as they feed people, but the Church cannot do this just by feeding people.
There is only one way. Move people from the desert into the well-watered Garden. And that can only be accomplished through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. This is because the wasteland is a picture of the human heart. Hearts must be transformed for the City and Nation to be healed. Apart from Jesus, can the Church change or heal a human heart? No!! Social programs, and I lump much of what the Church does into this category, can provide some relief, but they will not change the hearts of the people who need to be healed. In part, this is because the hearts of those providing the relief also need to be changed and healed. How can I release Living Water into a dying world if I am not filled with Living Water, if I am also living in the wasteland?
In the end, providing people with hope, which is no hope at all, is actually one of the cruelest things the Church can do. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing (or dream) fulfilled is tree of life” (proverbs 13: 13 AMP). Social programs that provide hope, but not the life transformed by Jesus, are no hope at all. They will not address the loneliness, despair, and hopelessness of life in the wasteland. It will not change a shrub into a tree. The fulfilled life is the life of the Kingdom of God, the life of Jesus. It is the life in the well-watered Garden where the leaves of the tree are always green and the tree always bears fruit.
Life in the wasteland is a life lived under the authority and control of Satan. Jesus tells us that Satan is the Prince of this world. The wasteland is the normal condition. The well-watered Garden is the interloper, the invasive species. We need to wake up to the reality of the world around us. Only the Church can change the culture of the City. How?
First the Church needs to embrace the Kingdom of God, preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and help its members grow into praying Kingdom men and women. It in not enough for the church to teach people to pray – they must teach them to be praying Kingdom people. The Power of God needs to fill the Church. Next, the Church needs to raise up an army of intercessors who pray with the Power of God. Then, the Churches need to demolish denominational barriers. With these barriers down, the Church needs to come together to embark on an intense prayer war for their city, in all the cities’ neighborhoods. For sure this will take organization and cooperation. But prayer can make this a reality as well.
The darkness needs to be pushed back with prayer. Just this alone will accomplish amazing things. With this work underway, the church needs to go out and preach the Gospel. Not the gospel of salvation – Jesus loves you and when you die you will go to heaven. The Gospel of the Kingdom – Jesus is working today to drive the darkness out of your life; in the Kingdom of God there is power to heal your diseases, save your children, strengthen your marriage, and take back your neighborhood. The Gospel preached to gangs, to prostitutes, to drug dealers, to those living on the streets, to the lost and disenfranchised. To those society calls the least. Like in the time of Jesus, they will be the most effective ‘preachers’.
And not just by a brave few. But by, or at least with, the support of the entire, integrated, Body of Christ made up of 100s of churches. And if members cannot be on the streets preaching, they can be intentionally praying for those who are.
City and Federal governments can do a lot of good. But they can also spin their wheels and even make things worse. Let them do what they do best, whatever that is. But let the Church rise up and do what only the Church can do in the name of Jesus: release the captives from darkness, set the people free from the chains that hold them down. Transform lives from slavery to freedom and victory, no matter their social, economic, educational, or racial status or background. No amount of money poured into social programs will do this because the fundamental problem is not a lack of education, skills, or even health. The problem is the grip spiritual forces of darkness have on our people and our cities.
And if the government says “we can work with you but you can’t take our money and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and Jesus,” then shake the dust off of your feet and move on. For hundreds of years the government was the enemy of the early Church and the Church was better off for it.
This is why Jesus brought the Church into existence. Is Jesus pleased with the Church in America today, with their plethora of social programs that the Church is so proud of? How can He be? Church, wake up. There is a reason denominational Christianity is dying in America and is dead in Europe. God has no need of you, if you choose to ignore His Kingdom and His power. If the Church was healing people emotionally and physically, instead of making excuses why it can’t do that (“suppose they don’t all get healed? We are all going to die anyway”. Do you think God is pleased with those excuses?), the church building would not hold all the people who would crowd in, not just on Sunday morning, but everyday of the week. If this were happening the City would be transformed. I guess you would call this ‘revival’.
We live in times of great brokenness, fear, and anxiety. God, in Jesus, has the antidote. It is right in front of our faces. And it is not too late. But only the Church, in the Power of Jesus, can transform society. But, from where I sit, the first thing that needs to be transformed is us, that is, the Church.