God, we thank You for the great privilege that You conceived from eternity past, before the foundation of the world: a gospel so glorious, so great, so deep, so wonderful.
And we thank You that You have, in Your time, released that gospel; that You have brought it right down to this earth in the person of Your beloved Son. We thank You that He Himself, in His person, has revealed to us the mystery of this gospel.
As the Holy Spirit is constantly interpreting to us, from year to year, from week to week, from hour to hour, the splendour and vastness of this gospel, we ask You to speak to us tonight. Open our hearts so that not only our minds might grasp something of the glorious gospel, but that something may be deposited in our hearts—something lasting, something eternal, something that brings us closer to You. That is all we need, Lord. Amen.
Last Sunday, I started to share something about the glorious gospel. I mentioned synonyms for the term gospel that are found in Scripture. I will add three more, and then I will enter the subject for tonight: the gospel of the kingdom of God.
We have covered the first synonym, which is the Way. We have seen that the gospel is not just a teaching. Many people say, “The gospel is number one, number two, number three, number four. That is all you need, and then you are saved.” Of course, we are saved if we enter the conditions for salvation. But the gospel is a way to go, with a definite start: one step, a second step, a third step, and maybe a hundred or a thousand steps more into the presence of God.
Then we saw the second synonym for the gospel: the faith, as it says somewhere, “the faith once delivered to the saints,” as a synonym for the term gospel.
The third one was the truth. Truth is not just something that concerns doctrine, although we need some doctrine. We need some basic definitions of Christian faith. But truth is a reality we live in, and we have to walk in the truth.
The fourth synonym for the gospel is the testimony. I think we all know that God Himself, through the gospel, has testified to Himself in what He has done in Jesus Christ.
Now I would like to add one thing that really lies on my heart, just very briefly. The fifth synonym for the gospel that you can find in Scripture is the knowledge of Christ. You find this in Philippians 3:8-10.
But surely I count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all, and count them to be refuse, that I may gain Christ;
and that I may be found in Him, not having my righteousness, which would be on the principle of law, but that which is by faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God through faith:
to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
if in any way I may arrive at the resurrection from among the dead.
I think you all know that precious Scripture. At least, to me it is very precious. The main thing in the gospel is to know Christ. Christ is the gospel.
In order to see something of the values of the gospel, we have to come to know Christ. It does not say somehow, “To know about Christ.” Paul does not say this. He does not say, “I want to know more about Christ. Let me read some more books.” Of course, it is crucial to read these books. There are precious ministries, and I would encourage everybody to really dig into these messages. But you can read all the books and not know Christ at all.
This is a very serious thing. The gospel opens up a way for us to come to know Christ in a very personal and real way.
We all have knowledge. We know a great deal. But the kind of knowledge we accumulate during the years we live here on earth does not help us to know Christ.
The kind of knowledge that Paul meant, I would call love knowledge. When the Bible speaks of knowledge, it means that special kind of knowledge you can only get if you start to love.
To know Christ means to love Him. It is as simple as that, and yet as wonderful as that. Do you love Christ? Do you love the Lord Jesus? Or are you beyond that stage?
You will never get beyond loving Christ, or you will lose Christ somehow. Deep in the heart of the apostle Paul, there was that longing, that passion, that devouring passion to know Him.
We have read it: “I count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.” The gospel became so precious to him that he counted everything else as nothing. Think of that: for nothing.
Then he says, “To know Him. To gain Christ.” I think Paul had Christ. He was the one who received the greatest amount of New Testament revelation, so to say. He was able to open up a vision of the greatness of God’s purpose that hardly anybody since the apostle Paul could reach in the same measure.
And yet, he felt in his heart that there was somehow an emptiness. Even if I have loved and followed Christ for years, there is still something empty inside—something that has to be filled with Christ Himself more.
Christ is not just that single Person who walked the roads of Palestine two thousand years ago. Christ is a whole universe. He is something very, very vast and great. So Paul saw that, in order to really come to know Christ, everything else is nothing—nothing, really nothing.
Is your history with the Lord a love story? I wish it were. There was a time in my life when there was a lot of knowledge. But there was a day when the Lord spoke to me and said, “Well, all your knowledge is nothing if you do not love Me. Give up your knowledge, and start to love Me.”
“Start to trust Me, and start to follow Me. That is the way you come to love Me.” Oh, that I may gain Christ. If this longing and desire would break your heart tonight, that would be great. Things would change in Richmond, Virginia, within a short time.
That is our deep deficit—our spiritual deficit—that we do not really love the Lord.
Love leads to knowledge, solid knowledge. In married life, it is the same thing. I think, in order to get to know your wife, it takes quite a number of years.
My wife and I have been married now almost twenty years. I would not pretend to say that I really know her. I love my wife, but I would not say that I really know her. There are so many things that lie ahead of me that I am really anxious not to bypass anything.
Let us love the Lord. Let us love the Lord more deeply.
I have a Chinese painting hanging in our living room. I think Stephen, when he was in our apartment, saw it. He asked me if I knew what was written in a few Chinese letters on that painting, and I knew it. It says, “Love thy Lord more deeply.” He just nodded and said, “Yes.” That is all he did.
That is what we need: love thy Lord more deeply. If you want to know the Lord, love Him.
Those who love Him, serve Him, are consecrated to Him, and are committed to Him—He will open up His secret. That is to know the Lord: to gain access to His secret. That is the depth of the gospel.
There is a sixth synonym for the word gospel in the Bible, and you all know that too. You find it in 1 Corinthians 1:18: the word of the cross. The word of the cross—that is the gospel.
Of course, it is a kind of negative aspect of the gospel, although I would not say that the cross is negative. The cross is something very, very positive. If you really are crucified, you are free. Today, freedom is a very positive thing. God has chosen the way of the cross to liberate us, to free us from all the negative things in this world.
The cross keeps out of the work of God everything that has nothing to do with God, with truth, with life, and with Christ Himself.
For instance, the flesh. Our flesh needs to be crucified. But the only thing you can do with the flesh is crucify it. There is no value in the flesh. Do not try to make the flesh somehow better. There is no way. The flesh has to be crucified. That is God’s way.
And the natural man too. The natural man, I think, has done more damage to the work of God and to the testimony of the church in the whole of church history than anything else. Of course, there was error. Of course, there was sin. All these things had to be dealt with. But the natural man has always slipped through.
He could do his own things according to his own mind. He could establish this kind of church. He could bring in this kind of teaching. He was untouched, undealt with. So the natural man has to be crucified. He does so much damage to the work of God.
Then there is the soul. Oh, there is much talk about the soul today. I am just finishing the book The Seduction of Christianity. I think you have read it. It gives you a good survey of all the different types of methods and teachings that are alongside human potential, as they say, or the scientific forces that are bound up in the human soul.
I will not speak about that book. I want to speak about the soul being crucified—the soul life, which is nothing else than the self-life.
Every teaching you encounter today that is propagating self is anti-Christian teaching. Do not follow it. Do not just ignore it. We have nothing to do with it. Jesus taught us to deny ourselves, to give our soul life to death. He that loves his soul will lose it.
Then there is the world, of course. Even the world needs to be crucified. It is so good that we have nothing to do with the world, although we are in the world. We are separated from the world. Between us and the world, there is a huge cross keeping us free from its influence and dominion.
And, of course, self-glory too. The cross takes away all self-glory, because all the glory in heaven and on earth belongs to God.
The cross eliminates what is a danger to true spirituality. It secures the glory of God. That is what the cross does. It secures the glory of God by bringing to death the fallen things and by procuring righteousness and peace.
The cross brings peace. The cross brings in righteousness. And righteousness is the basis of the kingdom of God. There is no kingdom of God where there is no righteousness. The way to righteousness is sin punished, the cross established, and the things that are under the curse brought to death—the death of Christ.
There is also the positive aspect of the cross. It keeps open this creation for the operation of the Spirit of God. It opens up a way for the Spirit of God to operate. Wherever the cross has been applied in a human life, in the life of a believer, there is a way—a freeway—for the working of God through the Holy Spirit.
At the end, the cross brings back all things to their original destiny. That is what the cross does. Embrace the cross.
Never be ashamed of the cross. Paul was bold when he preached the cross. He was bold. He was never ashamed because he knew that through the cross the power of God had been released in his life. He was a real testimony to that truth. It was the power of God to save—that wonderful word of the cross.
Finally, the seventh synonym for the gospel that you find in the Bible is the word of life. Hallelujah. The gospel has brought in life.
All mankind is seeking for life—for better life, for real life. The more they seek for life, the more they lose it. It just runs out. They cannot keep it and get through to it.
Through the gospel, divine, real life has been brought forth, because God is life. Wherever the gospel is preached in a real way under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, God is brought into a situation. The gospel is immediately followed up by the presence of God, by the authority of God, and by the power of God.
God is life, and life is in Christ. Through Christ and through our union with Christ, we ourselves receive eternal life. What kind of life is this life that we received when we were saved? It is resurrection life.
It is a life that can never be touched by death. It is beyond death. It is a glorious life. It is an endless and incorruptible life.
Through the gospel, everything is in life. If the gospel is preached properly, things start to come alive. The gospel is an enlivening thing. Everything has to be in life.
Our walk must be in life. We can follow rules. We say we follow Christ, but perhaps we follow certain rules. Then it is not in life. We have misunderstood the gospel.
I know there are the Four Spiritual Laws. There is nothing wrong with that. I think they have helped many to take that first step toward Christ. But then you should immediately get away from that, because you should never follow certain laws. It should be in life.
Our walk has to be in life. There has to be, deep within, that conviction, that intuition, that whispering voice of the Holy Spirit inside that gives you direction. Peace should rule your heart and your walk—the peace with Him, the deep assurance that God’s yes is upon your life, so that you can go straight on.
If we follow a law—even perhaps the Jewish law, a Christian law, a denominational law, or certain legalistic teaching—we are inwardly condemned, because the Holy Spirit will never support the law. We have been brought away from the law to Christ and Christ’s life.
Our ministry has to be in life. I went to a Bible school. It is so good to be in Bible school. You have a lot of time to read the Bible, study the Bible, study Greek, study Hebrew, talk with your fellow students, exchange ideas, and go into church history and the history of theology. You get to know all these wonderful things.
But in the end, you are puffed up—a huge balloon of knowledge.
Sure enough, one day came when somebody put a pin into that balloon, and it collapsed. There you lie on the floor, and you cry unto God. You have two minutes, and next Sunday morning you have to preach a sermon, but all the knowledge has been taken from you.
Then you cry for revelation, and God gives. If you have an honest heart, God will reveal Himself to you. He will give you a word. Maybe it is just a simple testimony. But if it is under the anointing, if it is under revelation, if it is in life, if God is in it, it will work more than a hundred sermons, well prepared and eloquently delivered.
Wherever God is, there is life and the release of life. The church is built with life. That is what we need.
Our teaching has to be in life. I do not know how you feel, but in our country people sometimes feel, “Well, we have had enough teaching now. Let us stop that. Let us just enjoy the Lord and go on having fellowship,” and so on. But what happens?
You can go on for a while, but suddenly you lose direction. You lose the track. You lose the balance, because things become dim.
What we need as a testimony of God here on earth is the continual new speaking of God. That is the kind of motor that keeps the testimony going: the speaking, the prophetic word that comes in again and again and again.
Teaching that is in life is not something you store up in your mind. It is something that brings you closer to the mind of God. That is what we need: to have the mind of Christ and to work out this mind of Christ through our lives, through our ministry, through our service, maybe through looking after the children.
Never look at this kind of ministry as a very small thing. It is a big thing. If you do it in life, it is great.
Our knowledge has to be in life. Our faith has to be in life. There is faith that is not in life; it is just a belief, just something that you can tell everybody. But if you have faith in God, you just rest in God. You are there. Nobody on earth is able to take you away from that place, that hiding place in God.
God is building His church with life through the gospel, because the gospel is the word of life. Let us preach the gospel. Let us share the gospel in life, and you will see springing up new believers, new testimonies, new churches.
It is easy to preach this way. We are under pressure in Europe. I shared that people are disinterested in the gospel in our country. They are blocked somehow. But I am repeating it: if you really preach the gospel in life, you will see that God will bless, that God will give His rain of grace, and that He will bring forth life in other people, in places, and in Christian groups.
May the Lord help us to be faithful to the charge He gave to His disciples: preach the gospel. The gospel of the kingdom has to be preached to the uttermost part of the earth, and then the end will come.
That leads us to the next thing we want to see: the gospel of the kingdom of God.
The gospel is light. It is something that comes right out of the heart of God—a brilliant light, an inclusive light. It came down to earth. It came to humanity, first of all in the Lord Jesus Christ. He represented the gospel in a full way. Then it came to His disciples, and they were sent by the Lord to preach the gospel all over the world.
This inclusive gospel, this bright shining light, when it came to humanity, was like light going through a prism. It is broken up into its segments, into its components. Or take another picture: you go through the front door of a huge building, and then there are many large rooms in that house.
I have found seven different descriptions that show us seven dimensions, seven rooms, or seven rays—seven different colours—of the gospel. They help us to see the inclusiveness of the gospel.
I will mention all seven, but I will only cover the first three. That is all I can do in this short time I am here. But I hope the Lord will give us a glimpse of His glory.
I dealt with the gospel of God in Germany, and when I was before the Lord on that subject, I came to know God as I had never known Him before. It is so great, the teaching of the Bible about God—who God is and the revelation of God. It really takes you from your chair. Thrilling.
Let us start with the first one: the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Mark 1:14-15:
But after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn nigh. Repent, and believe in the glad tidings.”
Here you find this phrase: the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Matthew 24:14 says:
And these glad tidings, this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the whole habitable earth, for a witness to all the nations; and then shall come the end.
Here you see how important it is to know this specific aspect of the gospel: the gospel of the kingdom of God. It does not say merely that the gospel will be preached. That is what we usually hear all over the world. They say, “Well, we have to preach the gospel,” and then they say, “You are a sinner; you have to be saved.” That is all right, but it does not say this here. It says the gospel of the kingdom of God has to be preached, and then the end will come.
Acts 1:3 says:
To whom also He presented Himself living, after He had suffered, with many proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things which concerned the kingdom of God.
That is what He did during forty days. These must have been marvellous forty days, speaking of the things that concern the kingdom of God. He explained to the disciples the kingdom of God.
And, of course, Matthew 6:9: “Thy kingdom come.” That is what the church is to pray. Do we pray this? We do not merely repeat the Lord’s Prayer, of course. But do we really pray, “Thy kingdom come”? Do we know and feel the necessity of the kingdom of God coming into this world?
The gospel of the kingdom was Jesus’ gospel. That is what He preached. The first message Jesus delivered was about the kingdom of God. Right after John’s ministry, He started to preach, “The kingdom of God has drawn nigh.” That was the topic of His ministry: the kingdom of God.
His last messages we find in the New Testament were about the kingdom of God. Acts 1:3—we have just read it. During those forty days, He shared about the gospel of the kingdom of God.
If you take the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, what is it actually? It is a proclamation of the spiritual laws of the kingdom of God. It is all in relationship to the kingdom. The whole Sermon on the Mount was His teaching; that was His gospel.
That is what people heard when they listened to the voice of Jesus. He always spoke from the kingdom of God. Actually, the whole Gospel according to Matthew is about the kingdom of God.
How about the parables of Jesus? If you look into Matthew, almost every parable illustrates something of the kingdom of God. It is a demonstration of the kingdom.
How about the miracles? We live in a world full of miracles, wonders, and signs. If you watch television here in the States—not so much in Europe, but here in the States—it is all about miracles, being healed by faith, and so on.
I think it is glorious to be healed through the power of God. You have a lot of miracles in the Bible. Never despise miracles. Never despise the working of the Holy Spirit in these days. It is glorious whenever it is the Holy Spirit.
It is a shame when things are going on under the name of the Holy Spirit that are not of the Holy Spirit, of course. But the miracles and signs that Jesus did were demonstrations of the reality of the kingdom of God.
Whatever the Lord Jesus taught and worked—what He did—was related to the kingdom.
Now there is a problem, of course. His gospel was the gospel of the kingdom. That is what He preached. We have to ask, “Isn’t Jesus the centre of the gospel?” That is strange. He preached the gospel of the kingdom. He did not preach Himself, actually.
Should we not preach Jesus? Should we not preach the cross and repentance when we preach the gospel? Did He separate the kingdom of God from His Person? Of course not.
This term, the gospel of the kingdom, reveals the very heart of God. That is why Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom.
What lies in the heart of God? What lies at the bottom of God’s heart? It is glory. In order for the glory of God to be revealed, the kingdom of God needs to be established. That is what Jesus saw, preached, and proclaimed.
Unless God’s authority has taken over the kingdoms of this world and turned them into the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ, there will be no glory at all.
The gospel of the kingdom of God reveals a great need on the side of God. Jesus always cared for God’s need first, because God was His Father and He knew His Father’s heart. That is why He preached the gospel of the kingdom.
At the beginning, God conceived the universe, including mankind, to be filled with Himself. That was before God when He started to create the ages, to create space, to create all these planets and all these billions of galaxies.
All these things should radiate, should reflect, should somehow contain God Himself—express the wisdom, the love, the greatness, the character, and the righteousness of God. They should express Him, serve Him, and worship Him.
As Paul saw it, with a dim glimpse, God should be all and in all. That will be the end of all the ways of God. But God had this end before Him at the very beginning. Creation took place to bring this final end into being.
But you all know that this goal was frustrated. Death came in, and death is always an insult to God. God is life. Death has never been something He conceived. There is no death in God Himself, because death is darkness and something defiling.
That is why the priests in the Old Testament, when they were in ministry, were not allowed to touch their own family members who had died. Whenever they went into the holy place, they had to leave death outside. They were not allowed to touch the dead or bury them. That was a hard thing. You find the cross even there.
This story was frustrated. God’s creation was corrupted. Sin governed the universe instead of the glory of God. That is the need in God’s heart.
Jesus is declared in the New Testament as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is the centre of God’s eternal purpose. He is the Lord of glory, and He is already the King. He has always been the King, even in His condescension.
But He could not come to proclaim Himself as King. He could not take over the earth for God when He came the first time. That is why He did not preach Himself as the King.
That is why He did not preach the kingdom of God as a present, official reality. I do not know which translation you use. Some translations give the wrong interpretation that Jesus preached that the kingdom of God had arrived and was then officially present.
Of course, there is some truth in it. The kingdom of God was in Christ Himself. In Him, He represented that kingdom. But it was not an official kingdom. He could not come and claim the earth for Himself then, because the earth belonged to Satan. Something had to go before.
He could not proclaim Himself as King in an official way. As often as people wanted to make Him king, He withdrew. They came to Him and said, “Let us proclaim Him as King,” and He immediately withdrew. When Satan offered Him all the kingdoms of this world, He refused.
He knew that first of all the Lamb had to be slain. The Lamb is always before the Lion in the Bible. The sin problem had to be solved. The power of sin had to be broken.
Otherwise, if He had taken over the kingdom at that time, God would have been misrepresented. Sin would have been lingering somewhere. The sin problem had to be solved first. Satan had to be defeated. His works had to be destroyed. Death had to be conquered with a glorious victory. Righteousness had to be established. Mankind was to be redeemed, delivered, and sanctified.
Then the kingdom was able to be established and to come. That was the mission of the Lamb of God: to bring this about.
People wanted a king. God sent them a Lamb. The Jews expected Jesus to be King, the King of the Jews. They were all irritated, including John the Baptist. He could not understand. Maybe even Judas himself was confounded, and he could not understand why Jesus did not take over.
The Lamb would not take over. The Lamb would be slain. The Lamb would die, and then the kingdom would be established.
But the mystery about the gospel is this: where we see a Lamb, God sees a Lion. There is a Lamb-Lion in the Bible, because Jesus is the Lamb and the Lion. Towards us, He is the Lamb. To God, He is the Lion.
At the very moment when Christ died on the cross—that very holy moment—I think the whole unseen creation stood still. They could not breathe.
Then they broke forth in a wonderful, great, and glorious hallelujah, because they saw suddenly and immediately that all the conditions were ready for God to be King of kings and Lord of lords.
The Lamb became, at that very moment, the Lion. The Lion represents the King.
Where we see the Servant of God, as Jesus was, God sees the King. He was a King serving all the time. Through His serving, He earned the rights to govern here.
That is a law of the kingdom. If you want to get a position in the kingdom of God, you need to serve Him. You need to be prepared to be the lowest, to be in the lowest place here.
All the things we denote as being the gospel—when we think of the gospel, we think of sin being forgiven, and so on—are just preliminaries to the kingdom of God.
The essential thing for God is the kingdom. That is why Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom.
Through His death, resurrection, and ascension, He opened a way for us to enter into and share in God’s kingdom.
Now, what is God’s kingdom? If we could discuss that question, we would have many different opinions.
There are people who believe that the kingdom of God will be a tremendous kingdom here on earth—something very stable, with all the Christians taking over the high positions in the government of the United States, maybe.
I do not think I would like to have any position, be it a military position or a civil position. I would not like to be president of the United States.
This is not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a spiritual reality today. Even if we pray and adore Him as King of kings, He is not yet officially King of kings here on earth. He is supposed to be the King.
Luke 17:20-21 says:
And having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God is coming, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor shall they say, ‘Lo here,’ or, ‘Lo there.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
This saying, “It does not come with observation,” means that you cannot just see it and say, “Here, that is the kingdom.” The kingdom is a spiritual reality.
When He says, “The kingdom is in the midst of you,” He did not mean that the conditions they had then were the kingdom of God. He meant Himself. In Him, the kingdom was there, but it was not yet an official kingdom. It was the kingdom of the Lamb, not of the Lion.
John 3:3 and John 3:5 say:
Jesus answered and said to him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except anyone be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus says to Him, “How can a man be born being old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except anyone be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Romans 14:17 says:
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That is the reality of the kingdom. It is a spiritual reality. This little phrase, in the Holy Spirit, belongs to all three items. It is righteousness in the Holy Spirit, peace in the Holy Spirit, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That corresponds with what John tells us in John 3. In order to have a relationship to the kingdom of God, you need to be born again—born by the Spirit, born from above, born anew, as it says in Greek. The Spirit is the Agent who brings this about in reality.
That brings you in touch with the kingdom of God. It is the Holy Spirit working out that birth.
The Holy Spirit is the custodian of the kingdom—the Spirit of the Lord and of Christ. He is the Spirit of the Lord, and He is the Spirit of Christ, the Anointed One.
The Holy Spirit represents and realizes the lordship of Christ on earth. That is the kingdom. The way the kingdom is experienced is by coming under the lordship of Christ first of all. That is the way we come to know the kingdom, the reality of God, and the reality of the kingdom of God.
The mission of the Holy Spirit in this age is, as it says in Ephesians 1:10, to bring all things under the headship of Christ.
There is much talk about the Holy Spirit. We have the same charismatic movement in Europe as you have here. Everything is imported from the States, of course. So we have the same thing—the same glory, the same error. We have everything you have here.
But do you know what the real mission of the Holy Spirit is in coming down to earth? It is bringing all things—all men, all women, all children, whatever is touched by the Holy Spirit—under the headship of Christ: to bring all things under Christ as the Head.
That is the mission of the Holy Spirit. Of course, He has to reveal Christ to us, but Christ as the Head, and we as the members of His body under Him as the Head.
Everything the Holy Spirit is working is related to the kingdom of God. That is His first aim. We have to understand this very clearly and always refer to the kingdom of God as a spiritual reality.
In the Pentecostal movement and in the charismatic movement, there is much talk about the kingdom: “We have to build the kingdom.” Have you ever read in Scripture the phrase that you should build the kingdom of God?
The kingdom of God is a spiritual reality. You have to be born into that reality. You do not have to build the kingdom. The kingdom of God will be revealed in its proper time.
But in order to be an expression and a representation of the kingdom of God, you need to come under the lordship of Christ. You need to express His lordship, and this is first and foremost: that you learn to obey the Lord.
Authority is expressed through obedience.
So many people feel that authority is pounding the pulpit like this, or expressing ourselves with a loud voice, or through huge conferences.
The kingdom is expressed in a life of obedience and faithfulness. Be faithful.
What God is looking for is people who are faithful to Him—faithful to His vision, faithful to all His commissions, faithful to His word, and faithful also to all the sufferings He brings into your life in order to train you, in order to bring you to a point where you have been reduced to zero and He is able to take over.
One thing really struck me one day. I read in a book—I do not know who wrote it—that God’s mathematics starts with subtraction. Then He goes on with division. Then He adds, and then He multiplies.
That is the way God deals with us. It is another way to express the work of the cross. First of all, God subtracts. He takes away from us. He reduces us, not because He has something against us.
Whenever God takes away something in our life, it is in order to make room for something glorious. If you take out the furniture from your living room, probably you take it out in order to buy new and larger furniture.
If God takes away something from you, if God is reducing you, He wants to replace it with Christ—by something real, by something living, by something that represents the kingdom of God.
That is the way the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. Everything that the Holy Spirit does is in view of the kingdom of God, because the Holy Spirit has the same mission, the same message, the same goal, and the same aim as Jesus Himself: the kingdom and the glory of God expressed in a world and in a universe brought into subjection to Christ and to God Himself.
If you preach repentance, why should people repent? Because of the kingdom.
Why should we be born again? Because of the kingdom. We are born into that reality where Christ is Lord, where God is all and in all.
Why should we have faith? Because of the kingdom. The kingdom is based on that righteousness which we gain by faith in Christ. There is no righteousness without believing in what Christ has done for us.
We have already touched obedience. Holiness—why should we be holy? In order for the kingdom to be established, because God is a holy God and His kingdom will be a kingdom of holiness.
There will be no defilement, no dirt, in the kingdom of God. That is why we need to be trained, and why the Holy Spirit needs to work out holiness in our lives.
Our calling, brothers and sisters—do you know that our calling is not just going to heaven?
I warn you: if the only goal of your personal walk with the Lord is finally to end up in heaven, you will be the only one in heaven, because the heavenly Jerusalem will come down to earth. You will be very lonely up there.
The kingdom will be here. Where the King is, there is the kingdom. Jesus Christ will come a second time. He will take over. He will establish the kingdom for a thousand years.
That is the first part of the kingdom, the testing part. Whatever we experience here, our calling is to have a part in that kingdom—to share the kingdom with Christ.
We will be under Him. He will always be above us, highly lifted up. Even in that kingdom, I think we will reign with Christ while we serve.
Do not think that you will have a throne to sit on and keep people busy all the time. No, no. We will serve Him.
But it will be a kind of service which is reigning, because we are under Christ and are expressing His kingship. We are sent by Him, and we are covered by Him.
The relations God grants us have to do with the kingdom and with the authority of God. As I mentioned before, all the sufferings as well have to do with it.
In order to be able to have a position in the kingdom of God, there needs to be suffering. I think there is no Christian life without suffering.
I remember, in my early ministry, in a small city near Basel in Switzerland, I was sitting in the choir. I was singing in the choir of that group, and there was a lady. We were talking before the training began about a sister who went through one period of suffering after another. Like waves, it came and came again—always the same sister.
We really despaired about the situation because we felt, “Lord, that is enough. Why? Why always the same sister?”
Then another lady came and said, “Well, I cannot understand. I have never suffered.” She said it very lightly.
Immediately, the first thought in my mind was, “Poor woman. Poor woman. You do not know the Lord. You do not know what it does.”
It is all about being part of the kingdom of God. If you have never suffered for the Lord, you will never know the glory of the kingdom. You will never know what it means to reign with Christ.
Paul said that we need to go through sufferings in order to be part of the kingdom.
Our consecration has to do with the kingdom. All spiritual things are for the sake of God’s kingdom and of God’s glory.
I think I will stop here. One hour is over, and I think it is enough for today. Let us bow our heads. Let us give glory to God. Let us consecrate ourselves anew for the sake of God’s kingdom—to be able to come, to be established, to take over. Tomorrow evening, we will continue.
Oh, Father, we praise You for watching the Lord Jesus being so faithful, seeing all the time before Him the deep need in Your heart: that lost kingdom which needed to be recovered from all the mess in this universe, from all the sin.
Thank You for His faithfulness. Thank You for His way to the cross. Thank You for His yielding to Your purpose and to Your name. Thank You for Calvary.
Thank You for that glorious moment when all the heavenly hosts broke forth in shouting hallelujah because Your need was met and the kingdom could come.
Thank You for the reality of the kingdom of God. Thank You for the Holy Spirit who has come, who has brought forth a new life in us. It is the life of the kingdom. It is the life of the King.
Thank You, Lord, for being faithful, for bringing us to a place where we can represent that kingdom in a very simple way, but in a real way.
Help us to understand that all things the Holy Spirit is working in our lives are related to that uttermost goal: that the kingdom of God be established in this world, over this earth, and finally in the whole universe.
We thank You, Father, that we have the gospel. We thank You that the gospel is the power to bring people under the authority of the King, to bring people into union with the King, to bring people under the power of God, under the power of the kingdom.
Amen.