Bible Studies

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Just as enlightenment brought responsibility and then fear in the first three lessons, in the second three the answer brought the awareness of the path and then loss. Now we are up to the seventh psalm. Seven is the number of completeness and today's lesson completes the larger cycle of seven by introducing us to the kingdom.





7. The Kingdom

My Lord and my God it is in You I put my trust. You will deliver me from those who wish me harm, who would tear my soul to pieces if You were not here to help me.

If I were to follow their rules, or if I caused harm to come to those who were not troubling me, I would give them power over me. They would persecute me, walk over me and take my inheritance away.

Rise up in your people, my Lord. Let the rage of our enemies awaken in us the power to overcome them and come near to you.

We hold your name high and become your Kingdom. Judge us by the standards You teach and reward us according to your mercy.

Let them all know the truth, that their wickedness might end and our works be established by your judgement. My defense is your law that saves the good heart and preserves good work but punishes the wicked. If they don’t change, they and their works will be cut down by God’s anger.

They work hard at causing trouble but they will fall by their own lies and their traps will swallow them up. Their evil ruins itself and is their undoing.

I will praise the Lord because it is the only way out of this place where evil dwells. I will sing praise that there is a path and rejoice that we are on it.





Twice we have been through the cycle of choosing which actions to take, then understanding the results of those actions, then experiencing the feeling they produce. The first three showed how not to act, the intellectual challenge of responsibility, then the emotional state of fear that it produced. The second cycle was asking a question bringing intellectual guidance to the path followed by the despair of losing our way, again.

This seven step process is highlighted in the seven ideas in this seventh lesson. First, we act by putting our trust in the higher power of our Lord and God, resulting in being delivered from harm. Next, we logically pose an if:then question to determine how we are to proceed. Then, we feel the awakening of power. In the second set, we internalize the lesson by holding high his name and showing the truth. Next, we understand the defense of law and what it saves and destroys. Then, we feel God’s anger and the ruination of evil. Finally, the seventh step is learning to move higher with praise.

No doubt God exists in higher dimensions that we cannot understand, but the separation we most keenly feel from our Creator right now is in the dimension of time. We speak of how things will be when all is set right but in his Kingdom it has already happened. Evil is very real experience to us but it is forgotten history in the Kingdom and there never was any doubt about the outcome. It is like we are on a path in the foothills where we cannot see very far ahead but there is a light in the sky over our far away destination. We know where this path leads and heaven to us is singing praises that there is a path and rejoicing that we are on it.

We have the power to choose which rules we are going to follow and no one can choose for us. Like the laws of time and gravity, we are under the authority of the Kingdom and its rules whether we know it or not: we can try to follow them as we are able or we can forget about it and go back to the rules of men as if there were no God (Mt 21:33-40). We are the husbandman of that parable and we must balance gain with cost in every action we take. We must judge temporary gain against long term gain and we are responsible for our choices. In the end we will receive according to our belief because the actions we take will be based on what we believe.

We see for the first time in this lesson the idea that good works are preserved and that evil cannot last because the seeds of its destruction are within its very nature. Evil seeks to cause destruction so it can prevail, but when it gains the upper hand its nature does not change and the destructive power turns on itself. Good may seem to fail for a time if it lacks the strength, but not because of its essence. Good endures because that is its nature.

The Kingdom is described as a place and logic dictates that if it is not here, then it must be someplace else. But faith is not logical and to experience the Kingdom we must first find it within ourselves. We already live there, it is our long home and it has been prepared for us from the beginning. This is nothing new, the prophets have always told us about it. There are many among us who already live there but all of us are subject to its laws, whether we like it or not; whether we know it or not.

At the end of lesson seven we first see the key to unlocking all the mysteries, the word that embodies the attitude we should adopt and shows our rightful place in the kingdom. It is the only gift of value we can give: praise.

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