Heavenly Father, how we thank You for the gospel. How we thank You that You have revealed to us through the gospel who You are, and that the gospel has come to us as the very power of God to bring salvation and all the things You wanted us to come to know.
And the main thing, Lord, is that You have brought us to Yourself through Jesus Christ. We thank You for Your presence, and we thank You for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. May You open our eyes and our hearts. May You open up Scripture to us so that we may be among those who know God, not in an intellectual way, but personally.
Stir up the love in our hearts for You. Even if we confess to love You tonight, Lord, You know how deep this love is—whether it is superficial or whether it is deeply rooted. We just ask You, Lord, that You may stir up that love, that longing, that passion for God, for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank You for this opportunity for You to speak to us in a very real and definite way. Amen.
We have been considering together some features of the gospel. You have come to see that in 1 Timothy the gospel is called the glorious gospel, or, as Darby puts it, “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.”
We have seen that there are several synonyms found in the New Testament that show us some of the different features of the gospel—what the gospel really is. It is a way, it is the truth, it is a faith, it is the knowledge of Christ, and many other things.
We have come to see that the gospel is not just a simple thing, although we need to keep, throughout all our Christian life, a kind of simplicity toward Christ. The gospel itself is not just a simple thing. It is a deep thing, a powerful thing, and a vast thing.
It is like light shining through a prism and being broken up into different colors, into different rays. Each ray opens up to us a new dimension of the gospel. You will never go beyond the gospel. It will always be the gospel. Whatever the Bible is teaching you, it will be part of that glorious gospel.
So it is good to have time to consider some of these dimensions. Yesterday, we started to speak of the gospel of the kingdom of God.
For those who were not with us yesterday, I will mention these seven different dimensions found in Scripture:
You cannot separate the gospel from the person of Jesus. He is the gospel. He Himself is the gospel.
The gospel of God is not only centered around Jesus Christ at the cross and all the wonderful things the Bible teaches us. The final goal of the gospel is to reveal the very being of God. The gospel is God reaching out into sinful humanity and bringing man back to Himself—to God Himself.
If you know something about the history of Jesus as it is related in the different Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—you will see that Jesus always pointed to the Father. As a man, He never drew attention to Himself. He always brought man directly to the Father.
There are not seven different gospels in the Bible. It is all one gospel, but these are different aspects, different segments, of the gospel. Each apostle in the New Testament had his own peculiar ministry entrusted to him by God.
If you seek the gospel in the letters of Paul, you will find a specific revelation, a specific feature of the gospel. If you go to Peter, you will find another feature of the gospel. If you go to John, you will find another perspective of the same gospel. When you take all these things together, you understand why the Bible calls it a glorious gospel.
Let us return to the first dimension: the gospel of the kingdom of God. We will read again the Scriptures we considered yesterday.
And having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God cometh, He answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
All these three Scriptures speak of the same reality: the kingdom of God. They point out that the kingdom of God, during this age in which we live, is a spiritual reality.
In Luke, we read that it has not come by observation. You cannot simply say, “Here,” or, “There is the kingdom of God.” Jesus added that the kingdom of God was in the midst of them, which means that in His person, in His being there, the kingdom was there.
But Jesus left this earth. He went back to the Father, and He sent the Holy Spirit. You cannot say that the kingdom of God has already been established here on earth in an open, public, official way. Even today, the kingdom of God is still a spiritual reality.
It is a reality because, as we read in John 3, in order to see or enter the kingdom of God, you need to be born anew, or born from above. As Jesus explains in John 3:5, you have to be born of water and Spirit—by that deep work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of every man, woman, and child. That is called regeneration.
You have to go through repentance. You have to go through that faith which identifies you with Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, as the Crucified One on Calvary, as the One who rose from the grave and came to life in resurrection. You have to go through the whole process of being crucified with Christ and being united to Christ in resurrection.
That is the way Paul shows us this same reality of being born anew. It is a real birth. Something has happened in your life that has never been there before. Something has entered your spirit and has been deposited in your spirit that was never there before—not even in Adam.
We are more fortunate than Adam. Although he was created without sin and was in paradise, in the Garden of Eden, he did not have what we have today. We have eternal life.
Perhaps Adam had an endless life before he sinned, but he did not have eternal life—the life quality that we have received through that deep work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have received eternal life: the life of Christ, the resurrection life of Christ, and, I would say, the ascension life of Christ as well—the very life Christ is living in heaven right now.
We received this when we believed in Jesus Christ. That is part of the gospel, but it is only one part. The gospel includes a much broader view of what God is doing and what God intends to bring us into. This broader thing is called the kingdom of God.
Regeneration is not merely about having our problems solved. Of course, if we are children of God, God is on our side. There are new conditions, new faculties, new possibilities, and new capacities opened up to us. We have a God who is able to do anything for us. Hallelujah! God is almighty God.
But this is not the main issue of being born again. Many people think of the gospel as the method to bring us to heaven. Of course, the gospel brings us into the heavenlies. We are raised with Christ and seated with Christ in heavenly places. That is where we are right now.
But simply going to heaven is not the aim of the gospel. What the gospel wants to bring us into is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God means the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.
The Holy Spirit is the agent of the kingdom of God, the agent of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ here on earth. He is sent to bring us under this lordship—to bring all things together under Christ as the Head, or to head up all things in Christ. That is the very goal of the gospel.
There are many Christians today, and many teachings, that say we as Christians are to establish the kingdom of God now. They say we are to take positions in this world to represent the kingdom. This is not true.
The kingdom will be established when Jesus the King comes. There is no kingdom without the King. First, Jesus has to come back. Then He will establish His kingdom in an official way.
Let us look at the characteristics of the kingdom of God. We have read in Romans 14:17:
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
As I mentioned yesterday, all three items are related to that phrase, “in the Holy Spirit.” You should read the verse this way: righteousness in the Holy Spirit, peace in the Holy Spirit, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Behind all these things, you see the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit. His mission is to relate all things He is doing in our lives to the kingdom of God. All spiritual things are for the sake of God’s kingdom and God’s glory.
The first item mentioned is righteousness. That is a very big matter, but I think very few Christians really know what righteousness is.
We are living in a day when all people claim rights—civil rights, human rights, children’s rights, wives’ rights. We are taught to claim these rights because they are ours. But what about the righteousness of God? God has His own rights.
His whole kingdom is based on righteousness. You can read this in the Psalms. The first thing the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives is establishing righteousness, so that we are able to live a righteous life.
This is not only in our personal lives. In order to represent the kingdom of God, the church needs to be founded on righteousness in all the relationships that make up the church. Finally, there must be righteousness in the whole earth. That is the foundation of the kingdom of God.
Righteousness means bringing everything into keeping with God’s character and with God’s holiness. God is a holy God. This means that there is a work to be done in our lives—a work of transformation, a work of changing us and remolding us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the Righteous One. He is the One who represents the character and holiness of God. He is the answer to the character of God. The way He is—that is righteousness. Whatever He does is righteous.
Righteousness also means that sin has to be judged. Sin is a very, very serious thing. People think that being untrue once in a while is not very serious, but sin is not merely something you have done occasionally that the Bible labels as an actual sin. Sin is a power. Sin is a deep, deep, and sad reality.
Sin has to be judged in order that the kingdom of God may be established. First of all, sin was judged on Calvary, on the cross. There sin was judged. The curse spoken upon sin was executed there, and the sinner was judged and put out of God’s sight.
That is how righteousness is established. That is why we need to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross. There is no righteousness outside of, or apart from, the cross of Jesus.
There righteousness was established. Everyone who comes to the cross and identifies himself with Jesus as the representative of the sinner, being judged by God, enters righteousness and is counted righteous before God.
Righteousness means much more than sin being judged and put out of God’s sight. There is another aspect of righteousness: the reward of faithful service.
Even if all evil things in the world are judged according to righteousness, there is also a huge matter that must be covered by God: faithful service being rewarded. Reward is a great matter in the Bible.
It is not related to salvation. We are not rewarded in being saved; it is all by grace. But when it comes to service, there is a reward. God will reward even the cup of water you have given to somebody. God will reward everything and everybody according to what he has done in love for Him, in faithful service.
If you have a ministry in the church that people do not see, and sometimes you suffer because nobody takes notice of what you are doing, wait a moment. Be faithful.
People who get their reward here lose their reward there. People who have not been rewarded here will receive their reward in a public and official way according to righteousness. God will reward everybody, every little thing we have done.
All the mothers who had to stay at home instead of going to the meetings because the children were there—perhaps they felt inferior because the brothers could go while they had to stay home—if your heart is faithful to the Lord, and you do this ministry of being a mother and looking after your children, God will reward you.
You will not lose or miss anything. Even if you did not hear that great message delivered in the meeting, God will reward you. What God gives you back will be as great as the greatest ministry you missed here on earth. God is faithful. He will reward you. Be faithful.
Do not think that your work is something mean, little, or small. No. If you do it unto the Lord and out of love for the Lord, the Lord will reward you. That is encouraging.
There is another thing related to righteousness. Think of all those who were faithful in testifying to the Lord Jesus throughout the ages. Read, for instance, the Book of Martyrs. From the beginning of church history, you see people who were faithful to the Lord and were put to death because of their confession and faithfulness.
How about all those who were never accepted by the world because of their relationship to Jesus Christ? Think of brothers such as T. Austin-Sparks. In many places, nobody knows anything about a brother like T. Austin-Sparks. They have never heard of him or seen one of his books. Yet he was a man of God who knew the Lord as few in this century knew the Lord, and he was really used.
Righteousness means that all these things which have been neglected—even by Christianity—but which were truly given by God, will be vindicated, established, and brought forth as the very thing God wanted in that time and generation.
Things will be judged according to God’s evaluation, not according to ours. That will be a great day, brothers and sisters. So many things God has given to His church have somehow fallen under the table. Nobody took notice, or only a few did.
A day is coming when these things will be brought forth as God’s own heart. Things will be judged and reestablished according to the proportions and perspective God intended them to have. They will come to their proper place in the history of this universe and in the history of God’s recovery work.
I am glad to know that. That means righteousness. Things have to be evaluated according to God’s purpose, not according to man’s appreciation.
Think of the sufferings of Christians behind the Iron Curtain. In Europe, we are close to these things and receive much news from communist countries. Since Mr. Gorbachev took over in Russia, the pressure has increased. The pleasant face on the television screen is not necessarily the reality of what is happening in his own country.
Things have grown worse, as far as Christian testimony is concerned, in the Soviet Union, and suffering has increased. Already for more than fifty years, there has been suffering. How about this? God will vindicate them.
In the heavenly court, He will stand up for each one of them. Each child who was taken away from his parents, God will vindicate. Every small believer who has suffered for Him, He will reward according to righteousness.
Finally, righteousness means that all honor and glory must be restored to God. That is righteousness. The kingdom of God is based on righteousness.
The Holy Spirit is working along these lines, bringing us to a place where we evaluate things according to God’s mind and God’s purpose. In our personal lives, our relationships, the church in general, and the whole earth, sin must be judged. In our relationships with worldly people, we have to be righteous. We have to be true.
That is what the Holy Spirit is aiming at. He is establishing righteousness in our lives and in all the earth.
The second aspect of the kingdom of God is peace in the Holy Spirit. Peace. Now, what is peace?
In 1973, we had a real movement in Germany because of rockets and military weapons being established there. There was a big peace movement. In all the newspapers, magazines, and even Christian magazines, the word peace appeared hundreds of times: “Peace, peace, peace, peace.”
They all talked about peace, but nobody really knew what peace was. Some said peace is the absence of war. Others said peace might be a feeling of satisfaction. Others said peace means no weapons in Europe.
Can you imagine no weapons in Europe with the same people? The matter of war is a matter of the heart of man. God never made war. God never intended war. War came out of sin. The fallen state of the human heart has produced war. All these cruel things are an exposure of the human heart.
Peace in the Bible means several things. First of all, it means sins forgiven. Let me ask you: in this very moment, can you honestly say, “My sins are forgiven”? I hope so. I hope you can.
There are many Christians who cannot say that. They do not really know whether their sins are forgiven or whether they will be forgiven one day. I am so glad to know that the gospel shows us a way for our sins to be forgiven immediately.
Once you confess your sins and repent of them, the Holy Spirit brings to your heart that wonderful assurance that your sins are forgiven—not because you have come through a certain process, but because of the blood. The blood is the real thing that brings us forgiveness of sin.
There is no peace in our hearts where sins are not forgiven. This is the first thing that must be established in our lives. The gospel of the kingdom of God means that our sins need to be forgiven. There is no peace apart from this.
The second thing is the consciousness of God’s acceptance. God has accepted you. That is the basis of peace. If you feel condemned in your heart, you will not have peace. The kingdom of God will not be there.
The Holy Spirit, based on the fact that your sins have been judged on the cross and forgiven by the blood, gives you the consciousness of God’s acceptance. You are accepted, and you are accepted the way you are. You do not need to be a different person. You do not need to perform somehow. You are accepted as you are.
Peace also means that our fellowship with God is restored. Of course, all these things must be in place in order to have fellowship with God, but that is great. Peace in the Bible means having real fellowship with God. God is there. You have direct access to His presence.
Peace further means that the enemy is subdued, subjected, and defeated. This is part of peace and part of the kingdom of God. God is sovereign, and the enemy is under Christ’s feet. Do you believe that?
There are many Christians who fear the enemy. They are not free to touch this or that because they fear the enemy will take over their lives. There is no peace where there is fear in the heart.
Jesus Christ has conquered the enemy. God has put the enemy under Christ’s feet, and there he is. Unless God allows him to do something, he will not be able to do anything. He will not be able to touch you. That means peace. Rest in the fact that the enemy is subdued.
These things have to be brought forth today because there is so much talk about casting out demons. There are people who see demons behind every tree. They are all over the place, these demons. I do not believe this.
I believe that the enemy is secured. I believe that God has taken over wherever people have given their lives to Christ and have faith in God. There the enemy is under God’s control.
Peace also means reconciled relationships among men. This amazes me: if people listen to the gospel and open their hearts to the message of the cross, suddenly things start to change. Marriages are restored. Broken relationships are restored. Enemies are reconciled.
If the gospel finds a way into these things, it is wonderful. The gospel is the power of God to reconcile people and so many relationships broken up through sin.
Peace further means overflowing life in the Holy Spirit. If God takes over in your heart, there is a well springing up. There is a fountain opened, and life springs forth—overflowing life in the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes in my quiet time, I have the sensation that I cannot contain what God is giving to me. It is something you cannot describe. It is a matter of experience—an overflowing life in the Holy Spirit.
Peace also means the experience of being loved by God. Many Christians, at least in Europe—I do not know about Christians in the States—do not really believe that God loves them. Can you imagine that?
We have to believe that. It is a great thing to know that you are loved by God, just the way you are. There is much talk now about self-assertion, but the only thing that gives you real peace is to know that God loves you and accepts you the way you are.
Finally, peace means a deep inward sense that things are being worked out in our lives according to God’s purpose, even when things are turned upside down.
Sometimes, if you follow the Lord, you enter into a certain mess or chaos. You start a fellowship, you make mistakes, people get offended, and things break down. You say, “Lord, is that what You wanted?” The Lord says, “Yes. Yes, go on.”
When you have gone through that kind of experience, you look back and see the way God has led you through. It was a glorious way—a way of purification, humiliation, and learning to be broken.
What God has worked through that very chaos, through that very mess, is glorious. Things come out according to God’s mind. To rest, even in a turbulent phase of your experience, knowing that things are finally worked out by the Holy Spirit according to God’s mind and purpose—that is peace.
Do not be disturbed by outward circumstances. Rest in the fact that God is in control. That is peace.
The third feature of the kingdom of God is joy. Do you have joy in your heart? I do not mean merely a human kind of joy. I mean that joy which is called joy in the Holy Spirit.
Think of the shepherds when the angel came to the fields of Bethlehem. He said, “I announce unto you glad tidings of great joy.” You see, the gospel has to do with joy—joy in the heart. It is the joy of the kingdom of God. It is kingdom joy.
How do we get this joy? It is the result of complete deliverance. If you experience that God is delivering you, then you experience joy in the Holy Spirit.
It is also the joy that comes when God releases His power and works powerfully in your life or in the lives of others. It is so great to see the Lord at work in people’s lives. That means joy because it is God working, not people doing things.
Joy means enjoyment of grace. It is all by grace. If you start to work, you lose your joy. If you start to follow rules, you lose your joy.
In our fellowship in Switzerland, we have had quite a number of people who were very enthusiastic when they came in. They had joyful faces and looked very nice. Then, somehow, one day they began to have very serious faces. You ask, “What happened?”
They lost their joy because they tried to reach spiritual ends by fleshly means. They read a book and tried the method suggested by a brother, but it did not work. It does not work. You lose your joy.
It is all by grace. If you have lost your joy in the Holy Spirit, go back to the fountain of grace. Start to live by grace. Let God work in your heart. Do not try to work things out. You will never get the thing you actually want. It is God who works the things.
If you enjoy grace, you will have real joy, the joy of the kingdom of God.
Another thing that brings forth real joy is serving the Lord. Service is not burdensome. So many Christians fear that if they really give their lives to serve the Lord, they will lose their joy and liberty.
If you are a real servant of the Lord, that is a very, very joyful thing. That is how you really experience the joy of the kingdom: love and service to the Lord.
Joy means that you have a deep inward satisfaction in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how you can experience the kingdom of God today. It is joy in the Holy Spirit.
How is the kingdom of God worked out in a practical way? How does God establish the kingdom of God here on earth?
Let us repeat that the kingdom of God is the absolute and eternal dominion and lordship of God. It means God is all in all.
Let us go back to Adam, to the beginning, when God created man in His image. Adam was destined to be the head of a race filled with the life of God. Adam was placed before the tree of life, and he was supposed to eat of that fruit, not of the other fruit.
Why? He was supposed to express God, exercise authority for God, and represent God and His kingdom here on earth, under the headship of Christ.
If God has His corporate man on earth filled with the life of Christ, His Son, then He also has the earth and the whole universe. That is a principle: if God has His man, He has the earth as well.
When sin came in, God lost man. Man fell, and with man, God lost the earth. So He began a tremendous and glorious work of recovery.
The first thing He did was provide a covering for man through a bloody sacrifice. He clothed them in their nakedness. Even if we are sinners, God provides for us a covering. He was not obliged to destroy man. He covered him and kept him.
The second thing God did was choose vessels of mercy to be instruments of recovery. All these so-called fathers in faith were chosen by God and became instruments in His work of recovery. First, they were single men being faithful to their calling.
The third thing He did was call Abraham. That was a further step in God’s recovery work. He gave him a seed. Abraham was to be the head of those who believe, the father of faith.
God gave him Isaac, the son of promise. God introduced the principle of faith in His dealings with man, so that all those who believe in the Old Testament and in the New Testament become the seed of Abraham, because the actual Seed was Christ Himself.
We are in Christ, and so we are part of that choice of God. Then God formed a nation out of this seed, and He gave that nation a land.
That land has a specific relationship to the nation, the family of Abraham. As long as Israel was faithful to the law God gave to the people, they were allowed to dwell in the land.
As long as God had a faithful people on earth, He had a land as a pledge for the whole earth being recovered to God and brought under His kingship. God introduced the kingdom into this nation—the kingdom of David and Solomon.
The land, being God’s land, was the first step for God to recover the earth. When Israel sinned and failed, the land was lost. They had to go into captivity.
During the captivity period, you find an interesting thing in the Bible. The prophets who lived at that time did not speak of God as the God of heaven and earth. During the captivity period, Scripture calls Him only the God of heaven.
Why? Israel was not in the right position before God. Israel was not in the land; Israel was in captivity. Therefore, God had no claim to the earth. He was the God of heaven.
As long as Israel was in the land, representing God’s kingdom on earth, God was called the God of heaven and earth. As soon as Israel was out of the country and in captivity, when the land was lost, God was called the God of heaven.
God never loses heaven. There is no problem about heaven. All the problems are here on earth.
But praise God, He never gives up what He has chosen. He never gave up Israel. He restored Israel to the land, and immediately He was again called the God of heaven and earth.
Of course, Israel failed again. Even the remnant that came back somehow failed. So God sent His Son, and through His Son He formed the church to recover the earth for God.
God has always had in His mind the recovery of the whole creation to Himself. The church is not like Israel, a nation, and the church is not a people with a specific land. The church is to spread all over the world in order to take the earth by faith for God—not in an official way. Make no mistake: you have no official position in this age.
By faith, we are to represent the kingdom of God so that God can be called the God of heaven and earth. The church has failed too. If you read through church history, it is one story of failure, but it is also a story of recovery.
During this summer conference, you will look into church history and see how the Lord took up His recovery work. But never forget that the glory of all this recovery means the coming of the kingdom—the reestablishing of the order God had in mind before sin came in.
When the church failed, God called overcomers. God has His overcomers, and through these overcomers He will bring in the eternal kingdom. That is how God will establish His kingdom.
How does the church represent and experience the kingdom in a practical way? The answer is through spiritual authority. It is all spiritual; it is not official.
Authority is a delicate matter. How do people in the world handle authority? What gives you authority in the world? Of course, it is position. You receive a certain position, and you have a certain authority over people. If you are the president of the United States, you have great authority over many people.
But it is not so in the church. What gives you authority in the church? That is a wonderful and great question. Perhaps age? Is the oldest person the one with the greatest authority? I do not think so. It is not age.
It is the measure of Christ that you possess and express in your daily life. That gives you authority.
It is not knowledge of the Bible. It is not education. It is not a Bible college that gives you authority. You can know everything you can get in a college and have no authority in the church.
You can be eighty years old and have much experience of different kinds, yet have no authority in the church. You can be a young boy or a young girl with very little experience and have authority because Christ is expressed in your life to a certain measure.
Even a child can express spiritual authority if Christ is expressed in that child.
What are the conditions for experiencing spiritual authority? First of all, it means living under the headship of Christ: obeying Him, humbling yourself before God, and having a meek spirit.
It is amazing that spiritual authority—kingdom authority—has to do with a meek spirit. Some people think authority has to do with a loud voice. No.
If you have authority, you can speak in a very quiet way, and people will sense that there is authority in it because Christ is expressed in what you say.
Brokenness is a condition for spiritual authority. Love—practical love—is a condition. Being a servant, serving, brings you into a position of authority.
It is not claiming certain rights in the church that gives you authority. It is serving. If you have never served, you will never come to a position of authority in the church.
Obedience and trust give you authority. Give room for God to come in. Do not claim your own rights. Do not fight for your opinions or force the vision the Lord has given you upon other people. Just wait until it is the Lord’s time. That gives you authority.
It is not knowledge of truth, nor your being right while others are wrong. It is Christ in you and nothing else.
You need the Lamb nature in order to exercise spiritual authority. It is the Lamb who is on the throne. Never forget that: the Lamb.
What is the church? Is she the bride of the lion? Is she the bride of the King? She is the bride of the Lamb. She has exactly the same nature.
There is a Lamb on the throne. If the church is to be the bride of the Lamb, she must be of the same nature. She must be a lamb—to be slaughtered and broken.
That is how God establishes His authority in the church and through the church. It is not by powerful declarations, as the world usually does wherever it goes, bringing its knowledge and wisdom. It is a strange way God has chosen to bring in His kingdom: by a Lamb being crucified.
Does this mean that we as Christians must always be soft and gentle, always giving in and letting go? What kind of message is this? Is this good news? Is this glad tidings? Is this the gospel? I do not think so.
Sometimes you have to be very bold for the Lord. To be a lamb does not mean that you simply give yourself up and let everything go its own way. No. Sometimes you have to be very bold for the Lord and His church.
But when you have to be bold, you can only be bold with real brokenness inside, with the desire to save and win people and situations for God. Otherwise, it will be fleshly boldness, and it will do much harm to people.
You have to be broken inside. When you have to be bold, you must have the desire in your heart to save and win people and situations back to God.
The kingdom of God is still hidden. The church is visible; you can see and touch the church. But the kingdom is still hidden. You cannot say, “Here it is,” or, “There it is.” It is not yet official.
This is important because in the Bible you find different statements concerning the kingdom. For example, some people believe that once you are saved, you can lose your salvation. That is not true, yet there are Scriptures that speak of falling into outer darkness, and some people fear that they belong to those who will fall into outer darkness.
We must make a distinction in the Bible. Whenever you read in the Gospel of Matthew about the kingdom, such as in the parable of the marriage feast, you must distinguish whether the Bible means the officially established kingdom of God in the millennium or the hidden reality of the kingdom of God.
You are born into the kingdom, and nobody can take that reality away from you. Once born, you are born. You will never be lost in this respect.
But when it comes to the official establishment of the kingdom on earth, you may lose your part in that official kingdom. You may lose your reward in the kingdom. That is the matter we must be careful about.
With the second coming of Christ as King, what is hidden will become official. First, for a thousand years; then there will be a short period of testing; then there will be the kingdom of God forever and ever, and we will reign with Christ forever and ever.
Always remember the double character of the kingdom in the Bible. One character is hidden; the other is official.
If you preach the gospel, you announce the kingdom. That is the gospel of the kingdom of God. You call people under the headship of Christ and into obedience to Christ.
You cast out demons because you have kingdom authority in preaching the gospel. You restore lives and relationships to God. That is how God works through the gospel, and that is how the kingdom is restored to God through preaching the gospel.
The gospel is not a small thing. It is a great thing.
Let me close with a few thoughts on how the church exercises spiritual authority.
The first thing is worship. Do you know that whenever the church comes to a place of worshiping the Lord, she is exercising authority?
Worship is not merely singing songs to God or enjoying the presence of God. Worship is a demonstration of the kingdom of God in a very practical way, because the foundation of true worship is the altar.
All your rights are laid upon the altar. If you want to worship the Lord, and if the church is to worship the Lord, there must always be an altar first.
Based on that altar-life, there is that wonderful and glorious life of worshiping the Lord. Whether you sing a song or wash your dishes at home, you are worshiping the Lord because your life is on the altar.
The second way the church exercises spiritual authority is through prayer: “Thy kingdom come.” Whenever the church gathers to pray together in a corporate way, it exercises authority for God because God has given her this authority.
We can pray in the name of Jesus Christ. That is why we add to our prayers that phrase, “in the name of Jesus Christ.” This has to do with the kingdom of God. We exercise authority for God through our prayer.
The church exercises authority through preaching the gospel. We often forget this. When we preach the gospel, we preach it with authority given by God. It is kingdom authority.
It is a glorious thing to preach the gospel. You represent the kingdom of God.
The church also represents spiritual authority through the word of her testimony and through the name of Jesus. Whatever we do, as individuals and as a corporate expression of Christ, we do it in the name of Jesus. That means spiritual authority.
Lord, I thank You for this wonderful gospel of the kingdom of God. I thank You for the manifold aspects there are to learn through the Bible—to learn a kingdom life, to live a life dedicated to You, and that the kingdom may be established not only in our personal lives and in our relationships toward one another, but finally here on earth in an official way.
We are praying, Lord, that You may come soon. Even this prayer has to do with Your kingdom, because there is such a need on earth, Lord, for somebody who brings everything into order.
O Lord, the only One able to bring peace and to recreate things according to God’s mind is You Yourself. You are the One we expect. Come, Lord Jesus. Establish Your kingdom. Make official what is a hidden reality up to this moment.
We claim the reality of what the Holy Spirit has brought into our hearts: the reality of the kingdom. We thank You, Lord, that You are Lord of lords and King of kings.
Let us be a worshiping people. Lord, give us that sense that worship has to do with authority. It is not merely a thing for enjoyment. It is a matter of the kingdom of God. It is a necessity to God.
O Lord, whenever we come together, especially tomorrow morning, let us remember that the church is there to worship God in order to represent and express kingdom authority.
Amen.