I want to turn to a number of Scriptures this evening, if you will bear with me: first in the Old Testament, then a few in the New Testament.
And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth.
And all these blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.
Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy cattle, and the young of thy flock.
Blessed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough.
Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
The Lord will cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thee: they shall come out against thee one way, and shall flee before thee seven ways.
The Lord will command the blessing upon thee in thy barns, and in all that thou puttest thy hand unto; and He will bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
The Lord will establish thee for a holy people unto Himself, as He hath sworn unto thee; if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways.
And all the peoples of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee.
And the Lord will make thee plenteous for good, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give thee.
The Lord will open unto thee His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of thy hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.
And the Lord will make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if thou shalt hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them, and shalt not turn aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
—Deuteronomy 28:1-14
But ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations.
And I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as My Father appointed unto Me;
That ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
—Luke 22:28-30
The New English Bible, as I said last night, renders Luke 22:29 in this way: “And now I vest in you the kingship which My Father vested in Me.”
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
—Luke 12:32
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
—Matthew 16:18-19
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
—Revelation 3:21-22
And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations:
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of My Father:
And I will give him the morning star.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
—Revelation 2:26-29
Shall we just bow together in prayer?
Father, we do thank Thee that we are gathered here together in the name of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus. We thank Thee, Father, for all the provision Thou hast made for us, both for speaking and for hearing, and we want to avail ourselves of that provision.
We want to stand by faith in that anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ, made available to us by the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit. O Father, wilt Thou make this evening a meeting with Thyself? Wilt Thou grant that every one of us shall receive something from Thee?
O Father, give that open door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ. But Thou grant, Lord, that we may know Thee in this place this evening, for we ask it with thanksgiving in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
What wonderful words, those words in Deuteronomy 28. Just take this little phrase in verse 2: “If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” The Lord thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth.
“The Lord will make thee,” verse 13, “the head, and not the tail. And thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath.” If.
I want to talk about reigning with Christ—however you like to put it. Whether we consider it as kingship, whether we think of it in the more specific way of exercising authority in the name of the Lord Jesus, or whether we think of it in terms of overcoming, I want to speak about this tremendous subject which lies at the heart of all God’s dealings with His people.
My purpose this evening is simply to introduce the subject—to give us, as it were, a bird’s-eye view from the Bible of what this whole matter of reigning with Christ really is.
The first thing I would like to underline is the divine purpose for man. What was God’s purpose for man in the first place? Was it that he should know God? Was it that he should not only know God, but be in union with God? Or was it further than that: that he should become the dwelling place of God, the eternal home of God? Or was it that he should serve God?
Why did He create man in the first place? Was man merely some kind of divine plaything? Was he merely an artistic ornament to decorate the universe? What was God’s idea in creation?
The divine purpose for man was not only that he should know the Lord—not know about the Lord, but know the Lord, every one for himself or herself. Nor was it only that he should be in union with the Lord, joined to God in one spirit, made a partaker of the divine nature, and brought into union with God through Christ.
It was more even than that he should become the dwelling place of God. We cannot stop there, as if that were the last word of God on this matter—that man should become the eternal home of God.
What was God’s purpose? Simply this: that man should not only know the Lord, not only be in union with the Lord, not only become the eternal home of the Lord, but that man should, with Christ, reign.
Man was to have dominion over everything which God had created. That was the purpose of the Lord: that man, in union with the Lord, should rule, should reign, should govern the universe, should administer the will of God, should reveal and express the mind of God, and should control or supervise everything which God created.
We see this right at the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1:26.
And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
—Genesis 1:26-28
The old King James Version, the English Revised Version, and the American Standard Version all render it, “Let them have dominion.” The New American Standard Bible says, “Let them rule.” The Jerusalem Bible says, “Let them be masters.”
This is quite interesting because we find the same word in Psalm 8:6-8.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen,
Yea, and the beasts of the field;
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
—Psalm 8:6-8
“Thou makest him to have dominion.” Thou makest him master. Thou makest him to rule.
You have the same word in Psalm 49:14: “The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning.” The upright shall be above; they shall rule over them in the morning.
Even more interestingly, we find the same Hebrew word in the Messianic Psalm, Psalm 110:1-2.
The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.
The Lord will send forth the rod of Thy strength out of Zion:
Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.
—Psalm 110:1-2
That word “rule” is exactly the same Hebrew word translated elsewhere as “have dominion.” It simply means, in both classical and modern Hebrew, to rule or to dominate.
The Oxford Dictionary gives a very interesting definition for dominion: “The power and right of governing and controlling.” The power and right of governing and controlling—sovereign authority, rule, control.
God’s purpose for man was that, in union with Himself, in intimate fellowship with Himself, with access through that union to all the resources, power, and fullness of God, and as the habitation of God in the Spirit, man should know the mind of God, the heart of God, and the will of God—and should administer it.
Such dominion requires training and discipline. You cannot just save people. It is not merely a matter of forgiveness of sins.
Just because a person has his sins forgiven, just because his wrong record is blotted out, just because he is justified by the grace of God and declared righteous through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, does not automatically mean that that child of God has the ability or capacity to reign.
That is only the first step.
The power and right of governing and controlling requires much discipline, much education, and much training. It is not a matter of mere title, mere position, or mere status.
Our idea in this world is often that, if you somehow give a person a title or a status, that is all that is required. But God does not work like that.
Even the Son was made perfect through suffering. He learned obedience through the things which He suffered. Though without sin, though tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin, He had to be trained. He had to be disciplined. He had to go through the experience of suffering in order to come to the place of ruling.
That is why the Lord Jesus said:
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit down with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
—Revelation 3:21
God is not interested in some divine bureaucracy. We believers are so used to bureaucracy in every realm of life that sometimes we think God must be like that too—that He wants a whole lot of divine civil servants with rubber stamps.
The idea is that every believer will somehow sit upon some golden throne, displaying his power, authority, and title to a wondering world. But the Bible does not say that.
There is in the Bible a big if. That one word is the key to so much in this matter. It is not an if to do with salvation; it is an if to do with the throne.
God is not interested in turning out some enormous divine and eternal bureaucracy, able merely to keep the machinery of heaven going. What God requires is that we, saved by His grace and born of His Spirit, should know the development and training of spiritual character.
Spiritual character and spiritual capacity are essential to kingship in God’s plan. It is not merely a matter of pedigree, position, or title. God wants the kind of character that can do nothing else but reign.
God wants the kind of character that cannot remain beneath. If the world puts it beneath, it comes out above. If the world makes it fail, it becomes the head.
There is a mystique of royalty. In the old days, ordinary mortals were kept at a distance, and the very distance heightened the sense that there was something special about the royal person: pomp, regalia, distance, and a sense of being different.
God allowed the Lord Jesus Christ, born King of the Jews and dying King of the Jews—whose great title now is King of kings and Lord of lords—to be stripped of every single thing belonging to the mystique of human royalty.
He was stripped naked, beaten, His beard pulled out, a crown of thorns pressed upon His head, a reed put into His hand, and a soldier’s cloak flung around Him. They bowed down before Him in mockery, horseplay, and cruel jesting.
At such a moment, a man loses all the mystique of royalty—if it depends upon pedigree, position, or title. In a moment, it can all be stripped away.
But when Jesus was most humiliated and seemingly weak, His royalty shone out most gloriously. Never in the history of the world had there been a King like the Lord Jesus.
He transformed that crown of thorns into the most powerful crown that has ever graced a human brow. He made that reed the most powerful sceptre ever wielded by a human hand. He made that soldier’s cloak the most wonderful regalia of royalty ever known in this world. If the world did not recognize it, heaven did.
At that moment, the Lord Jesus proved once and for all that He was worthy to be King of kings and Lord of lords. When man put Him beneath, He came up above. When they made Him the tail, He came out the head. When they laid Him low, He was set on high above all principality and power, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.
My dear friend, if the King would bring you and me to reign with Him, He must bring us the same way.
If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall also My servant be.
—John 12:26
You want to know what it is to reign with Christ? You want to know what it is to rule with Christ? Then you must allow God to lead you in the same path that the Son went.
It is very interesting, in connection with training, that it seems God had this in mind for Adam right at the beginning.
In Genesis 1:28, God said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” I am very interested in that phrase, “subdue it.”
There are those, such as G. H. Pember and others, who believe that the world was in ruin under what is called the gap theory, between the first and second verses of Genesis 1. But even if that is not so, it is very interesting that the Lord told Adam and Eve to subdue the earth.
Sometimes we have a wrong idea about what everything would have been like if all had remained good. We imagine that the earth would have looked after itself, without discipline, pruning, cultivation, or training. Not so at all.
The curse brought thorns and thistles in abundance. Yet, before sin came, God planted a garden and placed man in it. It was as though He said, “The whole world would be too much for him at the start. Let us give him a garden. Let us plant it, bring it into order, put him in it, and say: ‘Dress it and keep it.’”
The word translated “keep” can also be rendered “care for” or “cultivate.” In Hebrew, it carries the thought of observing, guarding, and watching. From the same root comes the thought of a watchman. It also relates to service.
The Lord put Adam in the garden and said, in effect, “Cultivate the garden. Watch the garden. Care for it.”
Does it not seem that, once Adam had learned the initial lessons in those physical and material things—as well as in the spiritual realities represented by the tree of life and the knowledge of good and evil—God’s purpose was that he should go out from the garden to subdue the whole earth and bring it into the same order as the garden?
Once the whole earth was brought under order, subdued and replenished, what then? Might not God have said, “You have learned the second-grade phase of your education. Now, into things unseen”?
Well, I do not know. But we certainly have the suggestion of some kind of training in the case of Adam.
I have put a number of Scriptures on the board because it is far too hot to go through all of them this evening. But this matter of dominion appears under a number of different headings in the Word of God.
We find it under the heading of the throne: 1 Samuel 2:8; Psalm 45:6; Jeremiah 17:12; and Revelation 3:21. If you take a concordance and look through the Scriptures on this word “throne,” you will make a great discovery: God wants us to come to the place where we reign with Christ from His throne.
We find it under the headings of reigning and ruling. Revelation 22:5 says, “They shall reign for ever and ever.” It does not say merely that they shall be satisfied forever or joyful forever, though that is true. It says, “They shall reign for ever and ever.”
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.
—2 Timothy 2:12
We have read Revelation 2:26-27: the Lord will make the one who overcomes to rule over the nations with a rod of iron.
Then there are the words king and kingdom. Revelation 1:6 has a textual question. Some manuscripts read “kings,” while the oldest manuscripts read “kingdom.” Thus, some translations read, “He made us to be a kingdom, priests unto His God and Father,” while the King James Version reads, “He made us kings and priests.”
In one sense, it does not really matter, because the same thought is present in Revelation 5:10:
And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.
—Revelation 5:10
Exodus 19:6 says, “Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” A kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
We have real problems when we translate one language into another. One word can carry thoughts that another language cannot fully express.
The Greek word translated “kingdom” primarily denotes an abstract idea: sovereignty, royal power, or royal dominion. That is why our dear brother, Mr. Sparks, often translated the word as kingship.
The New English Bible does this in Luke 22:29: “And now I vest in you the kingship which My Father vested in Me.” The word does not first of all denote territory or people ruled over. It denotes royal power, royal dominion, royal authority, and sovereignty.
Then, secondarily, it came to denote the territory and people ruled over. Both thoughts belong to the Greek word.
When the Lord Jesus said, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” we could say, “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you kingship.”
You are already born into the kingdom. But God wants to do something further: to bring you to the place where you share in the government of the kingdom, where you rule and reign from the throne of the kingdom.
I come from the United Kingdom, and some of you come from a republic. But God’s mind is a kingdom. You have not a president ruling over you; you have a King—an absolute Monarch. His word is law.
God wants to bring us all into this kingship. But He cannot do it willy-nilly. He must find those who, having been born of God, saved by His grace, and converted by the power of the Holy Spirit, are willing to enter into the discipline and training of His Spirit to bring them to the throne.
It would be easy if God could wave a wand over us and say, “Now you are ready.” But He did not even do that with the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus had to learn through experience.
God does not want superficial power. He wants people who know the inside of a matter because they have gone through the inside of the matter.
Matthew 16:19 says:
Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
—Matthew 16:19
The more literal rendering is: “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” In other words, you are reigning in union with heaven.
The Lord said, “Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” But if we look at church history honestly, it often appears that the gates of hell have prevailed again and again.
No sooner has the Spirit of God done something on earth than the flood of evil has come in, swept over it, and destroyed it. I believe much of this is because there has been a tragic lack of understanding among God’s people about the keys of the kingdom.
If there are gates of hell, they have to be locked at times; and if there are gates of hell, sometimes they have to be unlocked. There are times when we have to unlock the gates so that the captives of Satan may come out and become living stones for the building work of God.
You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can have evangelistic campaigns. You can do all that. But unless, behind the scenes, there is an executive authority—unless there are people who have learned to reign with Christ here and now—much of the value of it will be lost.
You have all seen it: great evangelistic campaigns, and then, after it is all over, so little lasting building.
What a need there is for us to learn this whole matter of kingship through our personal circumstances. If I cannot get victory in the matter of the kitchen sink, I certainly am not going to be able to reign with Him in the ages to come.
If I cannot get above in family life now, I shall not be able to reign with Him in the ages to come. If in the office I am always underneath and never above, there is something wrong.
It is not, dear friends, that we never go under. It is that when we go under, we come up. The Lord Jesus was ever only above; but when they put Him beneath, He was never more above. Work that out.
When you and I are prepared to walk with God in this matter of dominion, reigning, and overcoming, God will allow circumstances to come across our path that would not otherwise have come.
There are those wonderful words in the pattern prayer, Matthew 6:10:
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
—Matthew 6:10
That is not a faltering request: “Oh, may Thy kingdom come.” It is a declaration: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”
Then come the petitions: “Give us this day”; “Forgive us our debts”; “Lead us not into temptation.”
Daniel 7 speaks of the Son of man, to whom is given dominion, glory, and a kingdom. Then it says that the saints shall possess the kingdom.
Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.
—Daniel 7:22
Kingship. Dominion. This is the end of the matter. It is the objective that was in the heart of God from the beginning.
Ephesians 2:6 says that God “made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Compare that with Ephesians 1, where Christ is seated far above all principality and power, with all things under His feet, and made Head over all things to the church, which is His body.
The analogy of head and body is that the body is the expression of the mind and will of the head. The body carries out the will of the head.
Then there is this matter of sonship. When God uses the word son, there is more than a little suggestion that He is thinking of children who have grown up and can take responsibility.
You may have a boy, but he cannot take over the business. He has to wait some years. He has to grow, to be trained, and to be qualified. Then he takes over the business. You do not say, “My baby has taken over the business.” You say, “My son has taken over the business.”
We have the word adoption. Naturally, we think of adopting a child that is not our own. But perhaps the apostle was borrowing either from the Gentile world or from Jewish custom.
In Jewish circles, there is the bar mitzvah—the recognition that a boy has become a son, that he has become a man. There is a ceremony whereby it is recognized that he is now a son.
Consider Romans 8:14-17:
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
—Romans 8:14-17
I only want to suggest that there is some kind of maturity here. It is not merely a question of being children; it is a question of growing up and coming to a recognition of maturity.
Galatians 4:5-7 and Hebrews 12:5-11 speak of this. God disciplines every son whom He receives. He is training him. He does not delight in the discipline, but He has the future in mind.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
—Revelation 21:7
I do not think He means merely, “My child.” I think He means the kind of son who can take over the family business—the one who, by the discipline and training of the Spirit of God, has come to a place where he is able to reign and administer.
We think of ourselves as the bride of Christ, the wife of the Lamb. Yet it is a remarkable thing that God calls this wife of the Lamb the city of God.
I have never heard anyone refer to Washington or London as the wife of anybody. It does not seem to follow. The bride speaks of all that is intimate, tender, and related to the heart. The city speaks of commerce, business, government, and administration.
Yet the New Jerusalem, the city of God coming down out of heaven, is the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
This is very interesting because the whole idea is that this bride has come to the place where she can share with the King of kings in His government, where she can administer the will and mind of God with Him.
She is the city of God, the eternal home of God, the centre of an eternal administration, and the centre of an eternal government.
My dear friend, it is wonderful to be saved by the Lord now and to have tasted something of His fullness. But what will it be like when finally we are married to the Lamb and enter upon our actual vocation?
This is all a training college—a training course. What will it be like when, with the Lamb, we enter into the ages to come? We do not even know what God is going to do in those ages, except that, being the creative genius that He is, He must have so much laid up in store.
He has made the Son the heart of a new heaven, a new earth, a new universe, and a new order. Glory be to God: He has brought you and me into union with Him and built us together to be His eternal home, that the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb might reign and rule in the ages to come.
Turn to Revelation 22:3-5:
And there shall be no curse any more: and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein: and His servants shall serve Him;
And they shall see His face; and His name shall be on their foreheads.
And there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light:
And they shall reign for ever and ever.
—Revelation 22:3-5
This matter of reigning is not merely to do with the future. I think you have gathered that from what I have said this evening.
Many people relegate the whole matter to the future and seem to think that, in the twinkling of an eye, they will be made into kings and somehow miraculously given the ability and capacity to reign, rule, and administer the government of God. I believe that is not so.
One short life—and then what is called life. God wants to work capacity into life. He wants to produce a spiritual character in us that can reign with Christ.
We have to learn to reign with Christ now.
Think of Watchman Nee, imprisoned for twenty years. Humanly speaking, it does not make sense. When one considers the need for ministry, the need for sound teaching, the need for workers to travel and serve, it seems incomprehensible that God should put a servant of His in a prison cell for twenty years.
It only makes sense if God has a place for that person in His eternal administration. Then God is prepared to place a person in circumstances which produce a capacity in them for reigning.
We could speak of many people whose lives seem, from our point of view, to have been wasted—people whom God has allowed to be set aside, seemingly at the very time when their ministry was needed most. Yet God sees differently.
Consider Amy Carmichael. When she was sixty years old, she went to see a new work. In the most extraordinary manner, there was confusion at the entrance. Unknown to her, a coolie had dug a trench six feet deep just inside the gate.
She stepped forward and fell into it. She broke her ankles, her hips, her arm, and her ribs. They brought her out and carried her over rough tracks for sixty miles to the nearest hospital.
After some months, she began to write. The book that emerged was for all those to whom the inexplicable has come.
She wrote, in effect, “I feel a hypocrite in writing like this, because I shall be out and walking within months. But I have learned some lessons.”
She did not know that she would never walk again. That active, energetic ministry of hers stopped, and for more than twenty years she lay on her back. God closed one door and opened another, and from her pen came book after book.
Some people may find those books too artistic or too poetic, but in my little experience I have found that, for those who have the inexplicable in their circumstances, the books of Amy Carmichael have again and again been the voice of God.
There are many other examples. Think of Miss M. E. Barber, who returned from China under disgrace, having been falsely charged with adultery. Her missionary career and influence appeared to be ended.
She went to Bishop Handley Moule and told him the whole story. He said to her, “Miss Barber, do you believe God called you to China?” She said, “I do.” He replied, “Then back to China you will go.”
She said, “How can I? I have no mission behind me, nothing.” He said, “Do you believe God called you?” “Yes.” “Then God will provide for you.”
She went back and spent the rest of her years in hiddenness, in a little place called Pagoda Anchorage. There was much hidden intercession and a little Bible class. In that Bible class was a young man named Watchman Nee.
You might have thought that God would have saved Miss Barber from the evil charges laid against her. But He did not.
My time is well and truly gone. But you understand that, when I speak about reigning with Christ, I am not speaking merely of something that lies ahead in the future.
If tonight, or in these days, you say to God, “I want to reign with Christ,” think carefully.
There is an if in this matter:
If we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him.
If we endure with Him, we shall also reign with Him.
—Romans 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:12
It seems to me that God comes down to the circumstances in which each one finds himself or herself. Maybe it is the kitchen sink. Maybe it is something in the home. You cannot see, for the world, how that could have anything to do with reigning with Christ.
My friends, it may have everything to do with reigning with Christ. The way in which you gain control in the literal circumstances of your home may be the key to your being entrusted with something far greater in the government of God.
When we begin to see what the church is, when we commit ourselves to the building work of God, and when we allow the Holy Spirit to relate us one to another in Christ, all kinds of things are allowed to come into our corporate circumstances.
If we simply take these things on ourselves, they will sit upon us and paralyse us. I know many companies of the Lord’s children that have allowed things to sit upon them for years and years, until they have developed a kind of parasite-host relationship.
You know the hippopotamus and the little bird that cleans its teeth. The hippopotamus opens its mouth, and the bird goes in and out, picking away what is there. There is a host relationship.
Some companies of the Lord’s children have allowed things to come upon them which they should resist, rule over, and overcome. They should be above them. They should take their position in Christ and exercise the authority of Christ.
Otherwise, they will never see souls saved, the building work go on, freedom for ministry, or ministries raised up among them. They have an enemy.
God will not do it automatically. He will not do it for us. Until you and I learn together to resist the enemy, to reign with Christ, and to declare the will of God with our mouths in the place of prayer, we shall not see the power of the enemy broken and the building work of Christ proceed.
Why does God not do it all? That is an interesting question. Is He not interested in building us together? Is He not interested in unsaved people being saved in our company? Is He not interested in producing spiritual ministries?
He is—but He is even more interested in your exercising your spiritual muscles. If He had to do it for you so that you became weak and anemic, He would not do it.
He will allow the enemy to sit on you, and sit on you, and sit on you, until the word comes true: that what you have shall be taken away and given to him that hath.
It is the principle of kingship. It is the principle of overcoming.
I must finish. Our whole Bible is really Christ from beginning to end: God’s King.
It is a matter of you and me coming into union—not only being saved, but coming into union with God’s Christ; coming to experience the resources, power, and fullness that are ours in Him; and being built together in Him.
From beginning to end, the Bible furnishes us with the tragic evidence that the majority are not prepared to pay the price. They are not prepared to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. They are not prepared to lay down their lives totally.
So God takes those who will, and He does in them what He wanted to do in the whole.
That is what I want to look at in more detail, as the Lord helps us, in these succeeding times.
And now I vest in you the kingship which My Father vested in Me.
—Luke 22:29, NEB
Every one of those disciples had to be shipwrecked. Every one of them had to have that self-manufactured Christianity of theirs brought low, until they came to their own experience of Calvary and their own experience of Pentecost, and finally followed the Lamb.
Our Lord is saying to you tonight: “And now I vest in you the kingdom—the kingship—which My Father vested in Me.”
Are you prepared for what that will mean?