Have you ever been reading the Gospels and sometimes Jesus will talk about the Kingdom of God and other times he talks about the Kingdom of Heaven?
Read Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20 and journal your thoughts
So what’s that about? Are there two different Kingdoms? If there are then, what’s the difference between them? How are we supposed to know?
What we are experiencing here is the importance of understanding who a given book of the Bible was written to. When we begin to discover who the book was written to, we begin to uncover the context in which the book was written. In today’s Scripture Jesus is saying the same thing but uses different words; why?
What we know is that the Gospel of Matthew is written to the Jews. Now, within the Jewish culture they have a very serious reverence for the name of God. So much so, that even today when they type the name of God they type it G-d. In Jesus culture the name “Yahweh” was not allowed to be spoken because of their reverence for God. Because of this, whenever Jesus talks about God’s Kingdom in the book of Matthew we see this phrase “Kingdom of Heaven”. Now, the book of Luke is totally different, it is written for the outcast, so we see Luke using “Kingdom of God” to help his hearer to better understand what he’s trying to say.
This is why it’s so important to understand who the audience is of a given piece of Scripture. When we begin to hear the words of the Bible through the lenses of the original hearers, all of a sudden the Biblical world comes to life and we begin to see the story with clearer eyes.
Today as you study Scripture, begin to ask yourself the question; how would the original audience have heard this?
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