Section 03 - Keys of the Kingdom

Matthew 16:19 says this.

And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever you will bind on earth will be bound in heaven: and whatever you will loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

In the previous section, we looked at doors to the spiritual realm. We saw that there are two realms in the spirit. There is the heavenly realm where God dwells and the realm of darkness where Satan operates from.

Using Authority

We saw that it is up to us to open or close those doors. To do that you need to have authority. Where does authority come from? All authority originates from God.

The Scriptures are filled with symbols of spiritual things. If you allegorize Scripture, you will find that there are so many objects that have spiritual meaning.

One of those objects that has a lot of meaning in Scripture is a key. This is because a key gives the holder the right to unlock or lock doors. In the spiritual realm that speaks about authority.

God gives different levels of authority to people. He is after all the source of all authority, so He delegates some of this downwards.

As a king, He offers keys that symbolize the authority that He passes downwards. The Bible calls these the keys of the kingdom because they have been given to us by the King.

Adam and Eve’s Authority

You were born with a key. Maybe you didn’t realize it, but God gave us as human beings authority on earth. You can see this way back in Genesis when God created Adam and Eve. Genesis 1:28 says,

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

God put Adam and Eve and their descendants in charge of the earth. He offered to help them, but He did not interfere or overrule the authority that He gave to them. That authority of course has been passed down now to us.

The key to your future always lies in your hands, because God gave you a free will to choose. If you make a wrong choice He is not going to stop you. He’s not going to control you, because He has given you that freedom.

Two Doors in the Garden

When God made Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they had access to the realms that we spoke about before. That access was via the two doors. You might say to me,

“Where does it say that in Genesis?”

It doesn’t say it as clearly as that, but there are clear signs of it.

God gave them two trees. The one was known as the Tree of Life, and that symbolized the door to the heavenly realm. God offered the fruit of that tree freely. It was permanently open just like we saw.

God has given us an open door. It also added very good benefits, because if you ate it you would live forever.

The second tree was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that symbolized the door to the demonic realm. It was shut tightly and access to that door was forbidden. The Lord said,

“Don’t eat it and don’t touch it. Don’t you dare open that door!”

What was the benefit of that tree? It did have a benefit, and that was independence from God. That is the benefit that Satan came and sold Eve. He said that if she would eat of that tree, she would not need to depend on God anymore.

However, there was a catch, because it took away eternal life. You couldn’t partake anymore of the other tree.

Opening the Wrong Door

God gave Adam and Eve the first keys of the kingdom. They had the authority to allow or prevent what happened on the earth. They could open the door to blessing, or they could open the door to evil and a curse.

But we know that they sinned, and they opened a door that until then had been locked. They opened it because God had given them the key to do that.

When they did that they allowed the realm of darkness to influence the earth. And the Scripture says that the immediate result was a curse on the creation.

Satan cannot produce blessings. He is the author of the curse. You would think that God would immediately step in and say,

“Okay guys, I’m taking the key away.”

That is what you would do with your child if you gave them something and they used it wrongly. But God doesn’t do that. He doesn’t just change His mind and He doesn’t take back His promises. The Scripture says in Romans 11:29

The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable.

Adam and Eve still had access to the Tree of Life. The trouble is they had opened the door to Satan’s realm and he could now get access to the Tree of Life.

So God had to immediately ban them from the Garden, so that there would no longer be that open door of evil to interfere with His plans.

Reversing God’s Plan

As descendants of Adam, you still hold this key in your hand. There is only one problem. The door to the heavenly realm is now sealed shut to everyone who is outside of Christ.

The other door is permanently open from the time Adam opened it. Can you see the total reverse of how it was originally?

As believers, God gives us an open door to the heavenly realm, and Satan’s door is shut unless we open it. Instead, we are born now in a state of sinfulness where heaven’s door is shut off from us.

We don’t have access to God anymore. But Satan’s door is wide open and he has immediate access to us. That is why mankind is more easily influenced by evil than by God.

God now had a problem if you like, because He has given man the authority to decide what happens on earth. What could God do about that, since He was in a sense hindered or limited by whether man would empower Him to do something on earth?

Partnering With God

I want you to get this straight because so many people misunderstand this. Men and women can still allow God to work on earth. But God will only work via human channels and in partnership with human beings on earth.

In heaven and in the universe, God is sovereign and reigns. But on the earth, He placed that authority in the hands of mankind, and that authority still lies in our hands as human beings.

So although God is sovereign and can do as He pleases, He has limited His work on earth to those human beings who are ready to partner with Him. Unfortunately what humans do is allow Satan and his demons to work on the earth.

We still hold the key to keep that door open. And without God, actually, we don’t have the strength to shut that door and to stop it. We are at the mercy of Satan and his hordes because of our sinful nature and the door that was opened.

The New Birth and Its Benefits

There is only one way to change this. We must become born again. What does it mean to become born again? That is a whole big subject which I assume you know about already, but let’s see what the benefits are.

God is still sovereign as the creator. But on earth man must choose, so God must find a person that He can trust.

When He finds that person, He approaches them with a plan that He wants to implement. And when that person obeys and works with God in partnership, then He is free to make things happen on earth.

So many people cry out and say,

“If there is a God, why is this world in such a state?”

For a very simple reason. Because there are men and women on this earth and they have given license to the other realm instead of to God.

Waiting for Answers

You hold the key to your destiny. The chances are you have probably prayed and asked God for things. You have asked Him to make things happen, then you wait for Him to do it.

It often looks like He doesn’t want to do it, isn’t that so? I want to share some of my experiences with you quickly.

I was born into a family that wasn’t very wealthy. My folks were poor. As a child, I suffered many sicknesses and diseases and I grew up with a small little body. I was short in stature and the smallest guy in the class.

My social development was totally stunted and I grew up all alone. Nobody wanted to be friends with me.

But I believed in God. I grew up as a believer because my folks were Christians, and I asked God for good things in prayer.

But you know it looked like He favored the other people first. It looked like He wanted to do more for other people than He did for me.

People Who Partnered With God

Then I discovered something very important that I am going to share with you now.

In the Old Testament God chose specific people. He laid His hand on a specific person at a time, so that that person could authorize Him to work on the earth.

When God wanted to do something, He found a person who would partner with Him; someone who would enable Him and authorize Him to work on the earth.

Noah

Probably one of the first people God found was a man by the name of Noah. The Scripture says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

God wanted to destroy the world because of the sinfulness of men, but He was ready to save Noah and his household alone. However, God couldn’t just go and do it, because He had to partner with a man.

God found a man who would partner with Him, and use the authority that He had placed in man to authorize the destruction of the world.

Noah was the one who gave God permission to destroy the world in a flood. That may sound like heresy to you. You might say,

“How dare you say that Noah did that!”

But let me show this to you in the Scriptures. Hebrews 11:7 says,

By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not seen as yet, influenced by fear, made an ark for the purpose of saving his household; by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which comes from faith.

Noah condemned the world because until he obeyed God and gave Him license to destroy the earth, it couldn’t happen. So it wasn’t God alone who condemned and judged. He needed a man to work with Him in it, and He found such a person in Noah.

Noah only had the first key of the kingdom. It was the key that all of us hold because we are human beings.

Abraham

God found another person with whom He wanted to do a lot more. That was a man by the name of Abraham. God reached out to him and called him out of obscurity.

When he obeyed God, God could take him. He could use him as a channel to fulfill a whole new plan that He wanted to implement on earth.

God gave Abraham a new key of the kingdom. Abraham was the originator of a new breed of people, and his descendants would become God’s own people. He entered into a covenant with Abraham, and Abraham then authorized God to work on earth.

God needed to make a plan to reverse the effects of the sin of Adam and Eve. He wanted to help us recover from the curse that Adam had brought through his sin.

To do that God had to create a second Adam. He would give him the same test, and when he passed it, use him to create a new generation of people that would serve God.

But God couldn’t just do that. Why? Because man has been given authority on the earth. So God entered into a covenant with Abraham. The conditions of a covenant are everything that I have now belongs to my covenant partner and vice versa.

In order for God to enter this world and reverse the effects of Adam’s sin, He needed to come into this world and become a man. God needed to send one who would become His son. However, He couldn’t do it until Abraham authorized him.

Do you know how Abraham authorized it? God called Abraham to do something that was a very huge price. Abraham had his only son who was to be his heir, and God said to him,

“I want you to take your only son and go and sacrifice him to me.”

What a price Abraham paid. But do you know what happened? When he obeyed God and was ready to sacrifice his son, Abraham authorized God to send His son into the world and to now offer him as a sacrifice.

So God became a man in the form of our Lord Jesus Christ. And through the work that He did on Calvary, He reversed the effects of Adam’s sin.

God now produced a new generation of people which we will look at shortly. These people will obey Him and work with Him, and through whom He can work on the earth.

The Prophets

God always looked for specific people He could trust. And the people that He found in the Old Testament were known as the prophets. God said that He wouldn’t do anything except through the prophets. In Amos 3:7 it says,

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets.

The prophets were chosen by God, and they alone had this authority. Here was another key of the kingdom; a much higher level. When God spoke to the prophet, the prophet would use that key to release God’s will and purpose into the earth.

Our Wonderful Inheritance

That is how it was in the Old Testament. And since Calvary, something new has been instituted. God now has given to every single person who is born again and becomes a true believer, God has given so much more than man ever had before.

God would no longer have to choose specific people. Because of the work of Calvary, Jesus opened the door again to the heavenly realm. It now became available to anybody who chose and wanted it. All you needed to do was to become a member of His family. That is all it required.

Let me ask you a question. Which family would you like to join?

I grew up in a family that was full of love. I praise God for my family and for my parents. But I would look at other families and kids who just grew up with everything. They never lacked and it seemed like whatever they wanted they got.

I guess they were just lucky, right? You might say,

“They were just lucky. Boy, I wish I was born into a family like that.”

Have you often felt that way? You look at other people who just seem to have everything handed to them and you say,

“Lord it’s not fair. Why did you put me in the family I had that is so limited and restricted? You could have given me so much more.”

But then I discovered something so vital and important which I think most believers do not realize. I found out I could join the royal family.

Just take a look at the royal family and see the advantages they get. Everyone waits on them hand and foot. They are famous and they get whatever they want.

Sometimes they don’t even work with the family, like the wonderful couple Harry and Meghan, but they still have the titles of royalty. Everybody still panders to them and they are still famous and have a following, because of their link with the royal family.

Let me tell you something. As a believer, you can do what all the early prophets did.

You can hear directly from God for yourself. You can release God’s will into the earth through prayer. You can open the door to blessings from the heavenly realm, and you can close the door to curses from the demonic realm.

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