The Kingdom of Heaven is ….. accountability

A pleasant, thickly accented voice was teaching Hebrew. A beautiful lesson from a man I’ve not heard before. I was drifting along in the sermon of Dr Danny Ben-Gigi when he lost me. Lost not to disagreement but to a statement he made that was so sensible that I forgot to pay attention to what else was being said. Have you had those moments?

Bees and blackberry blossoms at the Toy Box Sub-Urban Farm

The Kingdom of heaven is accountability. Such a simple statement but one that goes to the heart with the simplicity of truth. The memory of dozens of lessons on what the kingdom of heaven might be and what it means for it to be at hand began to replay in my head. If the kingdom is accountability then we must have something and someone we are accountable to. The something is Torah. The someone is the King, Y’shua ha Mashiach (Jesus who is the Christ).

If ever there was a passage of scripture that seems simple to understand but trips people up again and again is "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 3:2  What does it mean?

The term "at hand" seems to make sense from the mouth of John the Baptist. An idea of pending, soon to appear, is the impression that I get. After all, John was the forerunner. But when the same statement comes from the mouth of the apparent king, it sets me back a bit. 

 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Matthew 4:17

What if John and the King were both saying, it is time to stop living your life as if you are not accountable to the Word of God, to the Torah, What if the king and the kingdom, that we are accountable to, are not primarily a personality or power but the Word of God, made flesh? 

If the kingdom of Heaven is accountability to Torah then The One I am directly accountable to is Y’shua (Salvation). This is not a salvation issue, because you cannot be accountable to the living Word unless you are already born again. Accountability is a matter of faith. Faith (A'men) does not always ask me to make sense of Torah but to stand firm on the truth of it. A righteous life suddenly makes sense. The kingdom of heaven is accountability to Torah in Y’shua-Salvation.