Week 23 Matthew 4
Right after his conversation with John the Baptist and right after his debate with the devil the first words that Jesus said as he began his public preaching & teaching were these: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (another version says here comes the kingdom of heaven).
I did a rough-count and saw that Matthew used the expression the kingdom of heaven more than 30 times. One of the interesting things I also spotted when I checked my wordbook was that Mark & Luke never used kingdom of heaven. But both of them consistently used kingdom of God.
I wonder what’s going on with the writers using these different expressions. There’s likely some technical explanation to account for it. But when I’ve read the gospels before my sense has been that kingdom of God is roughly equivalent to kingdom of heaven. For instance when Jesus begins his teaching Matthew said that he said: blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In my bible there’s a cross-referenced verse to Luke that says: blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. So even if it isn’t the exact same event being reported my impression is that kingdom of God & kingdom of heaven are interchangeable.
Note: quotes from Matthew 4:17 (ESV & CEB) Matthew 5:3 & Luke 6:20 (NIV). Matthew does use kingdom of God a couple of times and in 19:23-24 he uses kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God back-to-back (in NASB)