Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
Today I want to talk about Matthew 21 43.
The Bible reads,
Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given
to a nation, bringing forth the fruits thereof.
Now this is spoken to the Jews, and he's telling them the kingdom of God is going
to be taken from you, and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits thereof.
Now what I've been teaching in this series, a lot of people will call it replacement
theology, and they'll say, you know, you're teaching replacement theology.
Well here's the, isn't this replacement?
If the kingdom of God's taken from you, and given to a nation, bringing forth the
fruits thereof, you've been replaced.
You were the people of God, you were that holy nation of the Old Testament, but now
you've been replaced.
And today the physical nation of Israel has been replaced by believers, by a holy
nation made up of all believers in Christ, whether they be Jew or Gentile.
No matter what the nationality, we who believe in Christ in the New Testament are
the holy nation.
Now this scripture in Matthew 21 43 could not be any clearer when it says the kingdom
of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits
thereof.
Those who still want to hang on to this doctrine of the physical nation are still
God's chosen people.
They have to really grasp at straws.
So what they've come up with is, well, you know, the kingdom of God was taken
from them, but the kingdom of heaven has not been taken from them.
And they'll try to say that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are two
different things.
And so even though they lost the kingdom of God, they still did not lose the kingdom
of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are the exact same thing in the Bible.
The Bible uses the same term over and over again to refer to the same thing.
For example, in Matthew chapter 19, we have the story about the rich young
ruler and it says in verse 23, Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say
unto you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
So in verse 23, he says that the rich man is going to find it difficult to enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
And then he says, I'm going to say to you again, the same thing, that it's difficult
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
So right there we see that he's using kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven interchangeably.
So this idea that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are two different things
is just a myth.
It's just a fairy tale.
It's not scriptural.
For example, in Matthew chapter three, it says, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand.
Well, if you go to Mark chapter one, it says the time is fulfilled and the kingdom
of God is at hand.
Repent and believe the gospel.
So all you have to do is just look up every time it says kingdom of heaven and every
time it says kingdom of God and you'll find a ton of places where they're used
interchangeably and where you can prove that they're both the same thing.
Now I heard one of these teachers say, well, you know, the kingdom of heaven can't
be the kingdom of God because God is not heaven and heaven is not God.
And this guy thought that he was really clever with, you know, God is not heaven.
Heaven is not God.
But this actually makes no sense because if we took any king on this earth and applied
that same logic, it makes no sense.
For example, let's say David, he was a famous king.
What if we talked about the kingdom of David and then we talked about the kingdom
of Israel at that time that David was the king?
Are we talking about two different kingdoms?
Is the kingdom of, well, David is not Israel and Israel is not David.
So therefore, you know, the kingdom of David is different than the kingdom of Israel?
No.
David's ruling over Israel, okay?
So it's the same kingdom.
For example, there's a king over in Norway today, King Håkon, okay?
So is the kingdom of Håkon different than the kingdom of Norway?
Obviously, either of those will be referring to the same kingdom.
And so the kingdom of heaven is also the kingdom of God because God is the king of
heaven.
Because Håkon is the king of Norway.
Because David is the king of Israel.
There aren't two kingdoms over there in Norway.
There weren't two different kingdoms.
Of course, eventually the kingdom of Israel was split, but that's another story.
But when David was ruling over the United Kingdom, the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom
of David were the same thing.
So it's just ridiculous to say that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven
are different.
And the reason why people came up with that is just to try to let the physical
nation of Israel hang on to something.
You know, well, okay, you lost the kingdom of God, but you still got the kingdom of
heaven.
Wrong.
They've lost both.
And it's not even accurate to say they've lost both because there is no both.
It's one kingdom.
The kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are the same thing, and it's been taken
from the children of Israel, and it's been given to a nation that would bring forth
the fruits thereof.
He said, think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our Father, because
he said every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into
the fire.
.