Brothers and sisters, it is good to be together, sharing in these times. We are talking about very, very large matters: this whole matter of the church—its founding, its building, its struggle. All of these things are really very great matters.
Surely, without revelation, we will not really understand these things. So I would like for us to have a moment of prayer, asking that a spirit of wisdom and revelation be given to us, so that we can understand and see, in a larger scope, these things that we are involved in. Let us look to the Lord.
Lord, we always feel that we are on the edges of Your ways when we are dealing with these matters of purpose and counsel and Your full thought regarding the church. Lord, it is so easy just to bring these things down to A, B, C, and yet lose much in the process.
I suppose more than really even knowing any A, B, Cs, Lord, we want to be able to sense Your heart in regard to these mysteries, as it is the motivation behind the things that You are doing in these last days.
But we come dependent upon You and upon the work of Your Spirit, that You would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. May the eyes of our heart be enlightened. This is what we need in this hour. Do help us, please, Lord.
We look to You, we depend on You, and in the end, we rest in You. Thank You, Lord, for precious fellowship with brothers and sisters in these days. We want to add to that fellowship today, and thank You for Your life in our midst. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.
It is Paul who prays in Ephesians 3 that there are large matters which can only be comprehended when we are together: that we might see together the height and depth and length and breadth.
Actually, those four dimensions are left without an object, to which most Bibles put in love. And we certainly cannot argue with the height and depth and width and breadth of the love of Jesus. But actually, the context, if looked at carefully, seems to imply that Paul is saying it is only when we are all together, fellowshipping one with another, all beholding the Lord and sharing those matters that we see, that we can begin to see some of the height and depth and width and breadth of the Christ, including His love, which passes all understanding.
These are such large matters. These are things very important to the Lord’s heart. Unfortunately, we have small minds. By this time, our minds are maxed. Do we have any more mental power left? That is why it is so much fun to speak to young people, because they still have a little bit of brain open. By now, for most of us, to take something in, we have to reject something else.
But the Lord can help us all. The Lord can expand our understanding. Thankfully, He does it by first lodging something in our spirit. Then He can take His time and make it real to our minds in His wonderful process of leading us into all truth. So may the Lord help us in this matter today.
I want us to read some verses in the Gospel of Matthew. Let us start with Matthew 16.
Jerry, could you turn that down? Just a little fan blowing directly on my nose. Have it blow this way. I want Hawaiian breezes, please—not nor’easters.
Matthew 16. Let us read, beginning in verse 16:
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Boy, what expansion came to his spirit and mind to even see that.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of the heavens: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Then let us look at the other reference to church, in Matthew 18. We have to read the whole paragraph, beginning in verse 15:
If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established.
And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican.
Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
Then back to Matthew 11, just for a single verse—verse 12:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of the heavens suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.
Then Matthew 13. We will pick up in verse 9, at the end of the parable of the sower:
He that hath ears, let him hear.
Now, that should ring a bell with us from the book of Revelation, but we will leave that for now.
And the disciples came, and said unto Him, Why speakest Thou unto them in parables?
And He answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it is not given.
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.
Then, in verse 34 of the same chapter:
All these things spake Jesus in parables unto the multitudes; and without a parable spake He nothing unto them:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.
Here our Lord is revealing more mysteries, this time mysteries of the kingdom. My responsibility is to talk about what is being built. It is hard to talk about that without spilling over into who is building, how it is built, and why there is conflict. We have all found that, and we are just stealing each other’s territories as we go along.
But when we are talking about what is being built, what I have tried to share first and foremost is the fact that what the Lord is building today is a living church—a living body, a living temple. This is nothing built with bricks, but with living stones.
If we can really see a vision of the church as this living organism, as this body with its Head, doing the will of the Head in this world, then we have seen something of what is being built. We also shared the fact that the church is seen as the house of love.
Of course, we could take time—which we will not take—to talk about the fact that the church is this holy temple in the Lord. The church is to be expressive of the Lord’s character and the Lord’s life. That is why it is loving. That is why it is holy. That is why it is righteous.
Today we will touch on this matter of the kingdom. The church is part of this kingdom of righteousness concerning which we have read Scriptures. But having said all of that, and used images of a body, a temple, a house, and a kingdom, we need spiritual revelation to see the depth of these things, or else they are just metaphors.
I remember, as a young Christian and as a student in a seminary, studying these various things. But it was all so external. They were just metaphors. Actually, I did not know that we really are the body of Christ. I just thought Paul was saying that we are like the body of Christ.
But actually, there is such a living relationship to Christ that we do move at His impulse. This is something that can only be seen by revelation.
The fact of the matter is, even as happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, when somebody truly sees a heavenly vision, we are undone. When John saw the heavenly vision in Revelation, he was undone. There is an undoing involved in vision that actually paralyzes us. It throws us off if we really see with eyes given us by the Spirit.
This is the first and immediate result of really seeing some vision. In a way, you can sort of tell that somebody has seen something because sometimes they cannot even describe what they have seen, but it has torn everything upside down.
If you have seen the perfection and the glory of Christ and His church, it shines devastating light on what we are presently involved in. The glory and perfection of His will and counsel, when clearly seen, absolutely undo this miserable little whatever we are calling it, when we were quite satisfied with it before.
Did I tell you that when I was a pastor of various churches, I was quite satisfied with the subnormal church? Nobody is ever satisfied—please forgive me—nobody would say that out loud. But what I am saying is that, relatively speaking to other churches, it was pretty good.
But when the Lord began to open my eyes so that I could see the perfection of His church, boy, this thing fell apart. This is a joke compared to the reality. You see what I am saying?
I am sorry to keep using myself as an example, but that is what comes out of my head. The point is that when we really see something in the Lord in its perfection, it undoes what we are doing here.
Then, in that undoing, we have to eventually come to a place where we find a way forward. There is what the Lord has modeled; here is what has happened here. Now, how do I get forward? How do we proceed?
To me, it is very important to understand how we are to proceed. I will not talk about the building of the church per se—that is for John—but it is important for us to see the reality of our situation today in order to move forward. To do that, we need to set a little context and spend a few moments talking about some alternate understandings of the church and how to move forward today.
Frankly, the majority of good men, godly men, Christian men, ministers, and leaders of the church today have, in the end, a pragmatic view about the church. They say that church vision is too idealistic. In the end, that is what they say.
They can read books on heavenly vision and the church, and it just rolls right off their backs because they say, “Well, this is a wonderful ideal, but it is impractical.” In order for us to find a way forward, we have to come up with some kind of observation about what we are supposed to do.
Our brother Stephen shared the first and probably most common interpretation of how to move forward as the church today. Basically, it is the understanding that the church has been evolving through history—an evolution.
It is an uncritical view. Evolution is evolution; we all know that evolution means things get better and better and better. So whatever we have today is better than what it was, and it has evolved. We just deal with the de facto church without being critical of it. We just say, “This is the church.”
There is really no thought of what God intended for the church, nor is there any thought of God’s counsel and design for the church, because history has already created this church, and here we are.
Anyway, when somebody takes such a view of the church, as most people do, the church is actually just a means of helping individuals. The individual is the goal.
We have sayings such as, “Man, I had run out of gas completely. Then I came to church, and I heard such a good message. I got my tank filled, and now I can drive through the week and just kind of crawl back into the church parking lot next week and receive another tank full. Top her up, preacher.”
What is a church, anyway? It is just a building. But God wants to work on individuals. So you do preaching, counsel people, and want to perfect people if they are serious Christians. But the church itself is just going to be jettisoned. It is not an eternal thing; it is a temporary thing. So this constantly evolving thing is not very important anyway.
A second view, still in the pragmatic school, was actually, I think, historically devised by men who were dealing with the fact that they were pastors and leaders in churches that were, in the majority, unregenerate.
If I am not mistaken, the phrase “visible and invisible church” came out of the Anglican tradition. The lower Anglicans, as they are called—evangelical Anglicans—do preach the gospel and desire to see saved people.
But the confession of the Anglican Church as a whole is basically that when you are born, you are baptized, your name is written on the roll, and you are a Christian. As a result, the Anglican Church has, in the majority, unregenerate membership. That is to say, they are not born again.
How do we deal with this? They came up with this very good device: you have the visible and the invisible. The visible church consists of all the people who come gathering in on Sunday to the church building, or whose names are on the roll, or whatever you want to say. But the invisible church—ah, those are the real Christians.
We will never really completely know the difference between the two. So what we do is gather the visible church and speak to the invisible church.
Actually, in one way or another, that is the way most serious evangelicals deal with the church. They may put it in a slightly different way. They would say that you have the professing church and the real church.
What is the professing church? People who profess to be Christians, but are not really born again. If you take the parables that Jesus speaks, where you have ten virgins and five are foolish and five are wise, they always interpret it that the foolish virgins were professing Christians who thought they were Christians but were not really. The wise virgins were indeed those who were real Christians.
For example, Charles Spurgeon interpreted the parable of the ten virgins this way: the foolish ones were professing Christians, and they found out all too late that they had never really accepted the blood of the Lamb as their salvation.
That is a very popular view today: the visible and the invisible, the professing church and the real church. These are all wonderful devices to try to explain our situation, but they hardly fit with God’s heart or God’s mind.
Indeed, I think we can say that a pragmatic view which says church vision, or what is in God’s heart, or the ideal, is not important in the end, is not able to carry or hold the testimony of Jesus.
They devise human institutions and human devices, and call it the church. Things become compromised. Things become corrupt. Then they try to revive it. They hold a revival or call for renewal. The words may change, but what they are trying to do is pump that human institution back up.
But it cannot hold the lampstand. What is that lampstand? All seven churches in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3 are holding this lampstand, all of gold. This is the testimony of Jesus they are holding.
They are saying there is a perfection, all of gold, in Christ, and the church is to be of the same perfection. This is what we are holding. This is what we are drawing toward. This is what we are speaking of and testifying to.
But when you have some human institution, how can it hold that? You are not drawing toward that. You are constantly morphing into some other human sort of thing. You are building another little addendum to the building you are already doing.
Although many times God revives His people, it cannot come into an expression of God’s full thought because they are not interested in God’s full thought.
The confusion comes because of this, and we have to face it honestly. If these human-manufactured institutions, versions, and denominational things are wrong, how come God blesses them?
Here again, we miss the mark if we think that He is blessing the building or the institution and do not realize, number one, that He always blesses His children; and number two, that to the degree any group gathered together as Christians obeys the Word of God and loves the Lord, they will be blessed.
But just because there is blessing on personal lives does not mean that the Lord is blessing the organization that has developed. That is where the confusion comes. Even sometimes the Lord revives.
It is like this: on Sunday morning, the Lord looks down from heaven on Richmond. How many different buildings have we got there called “the church”? I do not know—five hundred? The Lord looks down. What does He see? Five hundred groups of His people? “Oh, there are My Presbyterians,” this and that and the other thing? Is that how He looks at it?
Of course, the Lord looks from inside the lives of His real people, not just down from the Goodyear blimp. What He sees are His precious people, bought by the precious blood of Jesus. He blesses them, cares for them, keeps them, and helps them.
But our mistake is if we think that because we are in the wilderness with the children of Israel, and we get fed, we get water, occasional quail feasts, and our sandals never wear out, that this is the promised land. We are making a mistake. We are being kept, even though we are circling.
My father-in-law was a wonderful Southern Baptist leader, to be honest with you. Maybe a year or so after I began to see some things, he also began to see some things, and he left.
He actually had a witnessing group of a thousand men. They would go and witness and lead people to Jesus. When he left that whole Baptist thing, he could not do that anymore. All of his friends—big businessmen, important people in the Baptist Church—came to him and said, “What are you doing? What are you doing? This is a ministry that is growing. We are going to First Baptist in Nashville and the big meccas of the convention.”
He said, “I cannot do it.” He had one friend, who recently passed away, who really loved the Lord. This man was a very successful businessman. Up until the last couple years of his very elderly life, he believed that God was going to revive the big Baptist church to which he belonged.
He believed it with all his heart. He would call up my father-in-law and say, “I think revival is coming.” They had all-night prayer meetings. People would get so close, and then there would be a fight among the pastors, or somebody would resign, or something would happen, or the deacons would fight over the parking lot that was being developed there. It just would not happen.
Every couple of years, they would cycle back around the wilderness and say, “Ah, we are going to cross Kadesh-barnea this time. We almost have a revival. We can feel it. We are bringing in the best preachers we know.” But it did not happen.
They would get sort of revived, but never really break through. Where were they breaking through to? The Lord was just blessing them because He loves them. The Lord loves us. Whatever configuration you are in, He blesses you. But that does not mean you are on the right track.
These pragmatic views, in the end, fall short of what the Lord wants and, sadly to say, sometimes even become an anti-testimony rather than holding a testimony.
On the other side, we have people who really see something. I will call them idealists for the moment. They see something of God’s purpose in the church, God’s heavenly vision of the body of Christ. They have really gotten hold of something, but they are never able to make it practical, bring it down, and work it out practically.
We might think that they are too spiritual. They are always seeing visions but never doing the practical thing. But the fact of the matter is, many people like that really see something. Praise God, they study the Word and seek the Lord, and the Lord shows them these things: the heavenly nature of the church, the fullness of the body, and the church’s value to the Lord.
They see this, and it captures them, but they are not quite able to make it work down here on earth.
These idealists, as I call them, share two different schools of thought. Some decide that the way forward, having seen this vision, is to proclaim the Word of God in such a way that the Lord can perfect a heavenly people by means of His Word and the work of His Spirit, without ever really touching the earth.
What I am trying to say is that, without real local assemblies, the Lord is perfecting a people in the heavenly places. Do you understand what I just said?
The ministry of the Word of God’s intention and full purpose really works on our lives. We realize we are a heavenly people. We want the Lord. We submit to His headship and all these kinds of things. But their basic feeling is that if you ever actually meet as a local group, it is going to go bad.
So God has a heavenly people all over this globe. It is a universal church. The universal church is emphasized almost to the point where the local church, although you have to meet with somebody, is not really central. What the Lord is doing is in your personal life and your personal understanding of the Lord. He is building His eternal house by dealing with you in that way.
I do not want to say that our brother Sparks held this view, but he so proclaimed the universal church that many people saw it. The practical working out of it, however, was always problematic.
Now, by the way, this vision of the universal church is absolutely true. Further, the Lord is building something in the heavenly New Jerusalem right now, based on those things that happen in our lives while we are living on this earth. All that is very true.
But surely, cannot we work it out somehow down here? You see, that is the rub.
The other view also takes seriously God’s heavenly vision, but then has trouble when it gets down here. It came from those who saw something and actually tried to work it out in the local assemblies. Then they were disappointed by the divisions, problems, and fruits of these local assemblies.
They concluded in the end that the church is too devastated to be recovered on the local level. The church is in such a state of corruption and devastation today that, even though we might see the church in all of its glory and heavenly vision, it cannot be produced on earth in a corporate way.
So the main emphasis is for you and me individually to be overcomers, even as it says in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3. The local church will not work. It is too corrupt; it is devastated. But you, as an individual, need to go on and be an overcomer. Meet with some people, fine, but it is not going to work.
Basically, this is the view that some leaders of the Brethren movement came to. The Brethren had a tremendous gathering of God’s people, and the light that God gave them was truly amazing. But it was not too long before they began to fracture and divide over doctrines. The thing got personal and deep, and there were tragic results.
Some of the leaders concluded that the local church could never be. The church is in a state of devastation. The church has gone to Laodicea; it can never be Philadelphia. So you just go on with your personal Christian life.
These viewpoints, which really see a heavenly vision, fall short if we cannot apply them in our gathered life together. If it were true that all we are to do in this present age is see heavenly vision and work out our lives with the Lord, then we would not have such a collection of exhortations regarding fellowship and body life in the Scriptures.
We are not being fooled. This is not some cruel joke. We are exhorted to unity, striving, fellowship, dying to self, and all of that—not in vain because it is not going to work.
This pure view of seeing the church up here but not down here falls short in the end because of this: in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, the testimony is being held by human beings in a local place on this earth.
They are imperfect human beings in the process of being sanctified, with a first love for the Lord, purity of heart, and a desire to be what the Lord wants them to be. They hold this testimony because the Lord is not demanding perfection from them; He is demanding movement toward Him.
As long as they examine their hearts, repent, and do what the Lord tells them to do, He says, “Hold on to My testimony. Hold forth My lampstand in this dark world.”
In the end, what the Lord wants is not angels, but glorified humanity as the church, as the bride, perfected.
What we find happening when there is a pure view without an outworking is what I am going to call—though it is not in the Bible—the leaven of the Essenes.
Jesus warns the disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees, the leaven of the scribes, and even the leaven of the Herodians—never the leaven of the Essenes. But I think I have found the leaven of the Essenes.
When you have such a view, there is a leaven of superiority that works its way through. The Essenes, after all, felt spiritually superior to the rest of Israel. This leaven of superiority is, in the end, just another word for pride.
Secondly, they isolated themselves, often in caves, so that they could live without sinners. They baptized each other almost every day just to keep themselves pure. And they died out because they were completely cut off from the reality of the church.
Every once in a while, we find this happening even today with this leaven of the Essenes. Let me make this final statement: neither the idealist nor the pragmatist works.
In terms of the idealist, church vision, if it is real church vision, must be applicable on three levels.
First, it must be personally applicable to our lives. We are baptized into the body of Christ. We are members one of another, and the Lord will deal with us as members of the body of Christ. Real church vision realizes that we are now part of something, and that the Lord deals with us on the basis of being part of something, not merely as lone individuals.
Secondly, real church vision must be able to be worked out in a local gathering somehow, to some degree. If it is real vision, then it is real body life. We learn together how to die to self, how to be washed by our precious Bridegroom, how to be taught by Him, and how to be dealt with by Him.
It happens in the local assembly, or it is not real vision in the end, you would have to say.
Thirdly, not only must it have individual ramifications and corporate expression in the local assembly, but real church vision must also somehow relate us and connect us to the body of Christ beyond our local situation.
Real vision connects us somehow around the world with other saints in other places. There is some living connection there that the Lord wants us to have. In the end, we do not just want to be focused on the local body, this little assembly where we meet, when the Lord is doing something so much bigger.
So I say that neither the idealist view nor the pragmatist view is going to bear the final fruit or bring us to the ultimate purpose. Well, where does that leave us then? Idealist—that is not going to work. Pragmatist—that is not going to work. How about pessimist? Is that going to work?
I believe there is a way forward to living in the reality of the church today. This is the way it has helped me, and I share it as it has helped me. Perhaps it will help you as well.
I believe that, in order for us to live today holding to this vision of God’s purpose, His plan, His outworking, His church, and its end—holding to that and living in this world today—we need to be able to hold on to both of the great revelations in the Gospel of Matthew: namely, the church and the kingdom of the heavens.
I believe our way to walk is to understand that we are dwelling in both of these realities.
The church is mentioned twice in the Gospel of Matthew, and only there in the four Gospels by this name, ekklesia, as we know it. This church is where two or three gather together, and He is in the midst.
This church involves all believers and only believers, in which everything is according to Christ. Christ says, “I will build My church.” We are talking about that church, not merely the outside-looking thing.
There is this church. It can only be what is of Christ. It can only be Christ. The reality that we have is the reality that we are Christ’s. This is the church.
It is a perfect church. It is not a compromised church. It is not a defiled church. It is the church that Jesus is building.
Do you know that right now, in the midst of all the confusion, Jesus is building His church? Do you believe that? Even when it is almost impossible to see, He is building His church. It is a glorious church without spot or wrinkle. It is all of Christ. It is a precious church. It is a glorious church.
When you see a vision of the church, you say, “Oh, Lord, I want to be part of that.” By faith you claim, “I am part of that.” Do you? We are. It is a finished work. We are part of that glorious church. We are going to be without spot or wrinkle because of the Lord’s faithfulness.
We need to hold on to that and all its glories. But at the same time, we need to realize that the reality of our life is that we are living in the kingdom of the heavens.
I am going to assume that most of you understand something of what that means. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is the only place this phrase is used: “the kingdom of the heavens.” You will not find it in Mark, Luke, John, or the rest of the epistles.
It is a specific phrase dealing with the kingdom of God, but specifically with the time frame from His first coming to His second coming. The kingdom of the heavens speaks of the kingdom of God now, here on earth, between His first coming and His second coming.
We need to understand what that kingdom is. First of all, it is a real kingdom. The King came. When did He come? He came to Israel back there in, let us say, A.D. 30. He came. The King came. Thus began this kingdom.
He bound the strong man. He began to deliver people from sicknesses and other things. Then He went to the cross, and through the cross, His death, and His resurrection, the gospel of the kingdom was preached. People have been entering the kingdom ever since that time.
But it is a spiritual kingdom, is it not? Why do I say that? We cannot see Jesus enthroned in Jerusalem. He is not the manifest King on earth right now. He is King, but He is King in your heart. He is King in my heart.
This is a kingdom, but it is an invisible kingdom. It is a spiritual kingdom. It is a powerful kingdom. There is a sowing going on. The Word is sown, and people’s lives are saved.
There are servants of the kingdom. Who are the servants of the kingdom? Ah, you are. You are serving in the kingdom. You are claiming your citizenship in heaven, claiming that Jesus is your Master, and serving right now in that kingdom.
It is marked by spiritual power going through the world. It is a kingdom of righteousness. Here we see the other kind of man that John was talking about this morning: the man indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That is who the members of the kingdom are.
It is a different thing, and you have to look twice, because that is the mystery. Jesus said, “I reveal through parables the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens.” During this period of time, the unbeliever cannot see that kingdom except as it comes close through the gospel or through your life. Then they see Jesus, and having seen Jesus, they come into the kingdom themselves, born again into the kingdom of God.
Here is this new life going on. Here is this new kind of servant. Here are people who have keys to the kingdom, locking and unlocking doors, praying and doing things. I mean, it is a true kingdom, and you experience that in the church.
But it is not only marked by this spiritual reality in your life and mine, and as we gather together. It is also marked by tremendous conflict.
When He comes back the second time, the conflict will be over. No more mystery. His kingship will be out in the open. But right now, is He King? That is for you and me to prove in our lives right now, in the midst of incredible conflict.
If you turn to Matthew 13, I am not going to read from it, but if you look at the chapter, you will realize immediately that we have seven—some people say eight—parables, all regarding the kingdom of the heavens. That means: what is the reality in the kingdom right now, as we live it before His second coming? What is it like?
It is a real kingdom. You know why? Because Jesus is sowing the seed of the kingdom. He is sowing right now. He is building His church. He is sowing the seed, just as He was doing back there in Palestine.
He shared these parables at the height of His popularity. His disciples were so excited. You can imagine them there by the seashore, up on the hillside somewhere, with thousands of people coming to Jesus.
Jesus is saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a sower who goes out to sow,” and the disciples are looking around at thousands of people. What do they have in their mind? “Oh, the kingdom is coming in now. It is a visible kingdom. We can see it. He is going to take His throne any day down in Jerusalem. First He is building up thousands of followers in Galilee.”
Jesus shares this parable of the sower, and of course it goes right over their heads. Afterwards they say, “How come You are talking in parables?” Jesus says, “In order to reveal to you the secrets of the kingdom.”
Here is the first one, as He explains it to them. I will put it in my young people’s parlance: “You think the kingdom is that big? Let Me tell you the reality. Twenty-five percent of the people did not even hear what I said. Another twenty-five percent are shallow. Another twenty-five percent are too busy getting rich. Twenty-five percent—that is the size of the kingdom.”
It is a mystery. It looks like many people. How many Christians are there in the world today? Well, it depends who is counting. If you get Encyclopaedia Britannica’s numbers, they are up in the hundreds of millions—the quintillions, the jillions—of Christians in the world.
Actually, how many are born again? I do not know, but it is not that big. In our present economy, there is this huge outer Christendom thing. The reality is much smaller and, thankfully, much more fruitful: thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold.
Jesus says, “Let Me tell you a second reality regarding the kingdom right now. It is true: I put My foot down on this earth. I am King. At the same time, Satan is sowing tares into the kingdom.”
Along with the born-again, the real Christians, there are people who look like real Christians and act like real Christians, but they are not. The tares. They end up tearing up the field. Jesus says, “Do not pull them up.”
That is a mysterious thing. But could you imagine what would happen in the church if we were always pulling up people we thought were fake Christians?
Over the years, I have always been surprised. Some folks I thought were fake held on. Some folks I was sure were next to Santa Claus in popularity with Jesus, as it turned out, were not even Christians.
John says in his epistle that the antichrists were those who came out from among us. They used to be part of us, but then they came out, and we see that they are not of us now.
Why would the King allow that to happen? Well, somebody was asleep. The servants were asleep, and Satan threw in his pepper. Now we have tares in this present kingdom thing going on here.
Not only that, we have the problem of the mustard tree. This is a parable about the little mustard seed of faith planted into the ground. Up grew a little fruit of faith, a little blessing, which somehow had some kind of genetic thing happen to it. It became a humongous tree, which a mustard plant is never supposed to become.
This is surely a parable of the fact that what starts out by faith and by the work of God is taken over by man’s hands and becomes a huge human kingdom.
In the book of Daniel, trees are symbolic of kingdoms. In one of the visions Nebuchadnezzar had, there was a huge tree, and Daniel said, “That huge tree is your kingdom.”
In Christendom today, in the whole panorama, there are so many huge human kingdoms where it is no longer faith but power. There is killing people who do not agree with us. There is tremendous pressure, tremendous money to be made, and tremendous power to be gained in these church hierarchies and structures.
It is despoiling the church and giving the church a bad name. But the Lord says, “Let it alone. Let it alone.” Even the birds, symbolic of the enemy, can come and sit in that Christian institution.
Then you have, of course, the leaven—the next parable, the leaven in the loaf. This is humbling to all of us because, basically, if I understand the interpretation in its simple form, it is saying this.
You and I gather together. We start a loaf—the Manhattan loaf. Oh, what a great loaf. I love Manhattan rye. There it is; the loaf is growing. As the loaf is growing, everything is cool.
We say, “Hey, what is going on here? It is growing up. Who stuffed the leaven in there?” Well, it is my flesh and your flesh. We did not even know it. We were sincere. We got together. We wanted only God.
“God, we only want You to build Your church. Only You build.” All the time, we are chucking leaven in there and kneading it into the dough. When things start growing up, we begin to realize how much our flesh spoils and corrupts things in the church.
We do not have to look any further than ourselves to find our enemy. It is not only the devil sowing tares. It is our undealt-with flesh, as our brother shared the other day. Once that gets into the church, all kinds of damage goes on.
We could say, “Lord, why do You allow this kind of thing?” But that is the mystery of this age.
We have a dear sister here from Russia, who is a translator for me when I go there. She is a wonderful sister. The Lord is working in a mighty way in Russia right now. The Iron Curtain has only been opened for the gospel for the last ten or twelve years, and in certain places the Lord is blessing in amazing ways.
In China, we hear stories of how many millions of Christians there are now and what God is doing. A short time back, one of the Russian pastors came through and was speaking in South Jersey. I was there and enjoyed very much what he had to say.
One thing he said was that, when he went to his particular area in obedience to God, it was not his home territory at all. God had been moving there in tremendous ways. Thousands and thousands of people had been saved in his region.
After telling that story, he basically said, “It really has very little to do with me. My region is the region where all the prisons were that held the Christians. I believe all those Christians, before they died, were praying for our area. The blood of the martyrs was the reason for the fruit in the area.”
It is a marvelous work that God does. I love to go to Russia just to see some virgin territory. They are going places where there is no church, so you do not have to say, “Okay, Baptist, Methodist, or non-denominational.” It is nothing. You go there, preach Jesus, people get saved, and you have the church. It is simple. Virgin territory. The kingdom is moving. Everything is wonderful.
Now, I know this is going to sound very pessimistic. It is all brand new now—ten years old. It is already leaven. There are going to be some trees. Satan is going to plant some tares.
That is pretty discouraging. Why even go to Russia? Why go to Russia? I go to Russia every year. I try to get out there. Why? Because the Lord said, “Just keep sowing the seed and mind your own business.”
I rejoice to go out there with my precious brothers and sisters and sow. But why does God allow these things? Of course, you know what He is doing. The mystery is going to be found out one day, but you already have clues from the Bible. He is truly establishing His kingdom through this conflict.
We need to finish with the last three parables. He is doing all this and allowing all this to happen right now because here is another mystery: there is a treasure buried in this field, and it is a treasure to Him. He is going to have a people.
There is the pearl. The pearl is a pearl that He wants to buy. It is His bride. Out of this whole confusion, when it is all done, He is going to have a precious pearl—a pearl made through suffering.
He is going to have precious stones. This treasure is made through intense heat and pressure. All these things that we think are so adverse now—the corruption, the kingdoms of man, all the leaven within our flesh—are awful and terrible. Yet God, in His wisdom, is using the whole thing to find His treasure and gain His pearl.
The last parable is the net, where they cast the net and pull in everybody. It basically says that, in the end, God is going to judge the real from the false. So just leave it with Him. But we are living in this mystery right now.
Let me put it this way: Peter had to hold on to both of these truths. “Peter, upon this rock I will build My church.” “Peter, I am giving you the keys of the kingdom.” Peter, you have to live in both realities.
There is this perfect church that I am building through it all. Sometimes you cannot see it, but it is there. It is glorious. I am building it. At the same time, you are involved in this kingdom where you are working, serving, and bearing fruit for Me. But there is also conflict.
There is tragedy. There is disappointment. There are things that go wrong that seem to be right—until I come back. This is the condition. Can we live both ways like that?
This is how we live: we live in the church, and we live in the kingdom.
For anybody who has not heard or read these messages, I want to recommend a little book. It contains some messages of Stephen’s, which I see they are selling for two dollars at the bookstore: The Kingdom and the Church. It was ten years ago at least—perhaps twelve years ago.
Here are the four messages he gave that year. This was my second favorite series of messages I ever heard in the thirty years I came to Richmond. I will not tell you the first.
You can get these online and hear them, or buy this book for two dollars and read them. Listen:
The kingdom is one with the church—no-brainer, right? Then, “The kingdom is bigger than the church.” Hmm. You have to think about that a little bit. You had better read that.
“The kingdom builds the church.” How is the church built? By preaching the gospel—the kingdom work; by serving faithfully; by sowing the seed.
“The church brings in the kingdom.” It is when the church is perfected that the kingdom comes.
Those are good messages. I could sit here and ponder those four titles without even reading the book. Those are four profound titles and really wonderful messages.
That is where we are living right now. That is where we are. Do you understand that? He is building His church. It is a glorious church. Praise God.
We come together as His church, see further into what He desires for His church, and move toward it. All the time, we live in this kingdom world. We serve our King. We preach the gospel. We minister the Word. We help one another. We build things up.
All the time, we have to deal with leaven. We have to repent when we start building a kingdom. We have to realize before it is too late the problems we face. Even when it is too late, the Lord uses corruption and devastation to do His final work.
This is the mystery. Where does it leave us?
I am going to share, I guess, about five things very practically. If you hold on to both of these realities—if you hold only to the perfection of the church—you will be so disappointed by what comes out.
But if you hold only to the wrestling in the kingdom, after a while you will forget the perfection and just become a wrestler with tattoos. Oh, no. There is something we are stretching forward to, but there is something we are doing here now. How do we go forward?
Number one: if you see His purpose, if you see His end, if you see His church, if His vision has been made real to you, I want you to know this: it is not an accident that you see those things. You are chosen.
I want to encourage you to take that vision seriously. Many people do not see that. Brothers and sisters, the Lord holds us responsible to be faithful and obedient to the level of light that we have.
If you see this light, you are responsible. You are a chosen vessel.
Secondly, frankly, you are a chosen vessel to travail because of that which you see. If we see heavenly vision, how can we be anything other than someone who travails?
When you see the perfection of what He demands and what He will have, and you see presently—even now, as close as we are to the Lord’s return—where we are at, if nothing else, it breaks your heart. Does it break your heart?
Forget the tragedies we see in other places, where the pastor runs off with the organist, or the church splits over some foolish thing. In our own midst, when we really see what the Lord is after, does it not break your heart that we are so satisfied where we are? Will you pray about that?
I am not suggesting that we all become long-faced, with no more smiles for the rest of the conference, or that we have a prayer meeting on Tuesday nights and a groaning meeting on Thursday nights. Actually, most of us have combined those meetings.
But we really need to travail over this. If we see what the Lord wants, at least we know this: He wants us to be praying, “Oh, God, do Thy will on earth.”
If we are not travailing, we are not going to be willing to pay the price. But if we are travailing, we will find ourselves saying, “Yes, Lord, even through me and in me, deal with me. But Lord, I want what You want.”
To me, one of the high marks in the Old Testament is David’s vow in Psalm 132. After having his own palace built, he said, “Lord, I take a vow: I will not sleep; I will not close my eyes until You have a house.”
He travailed in such a way that God built the house through his son. We are called to travail. We see the fullness of His glory and the smallness of our lives.
When I hear saints bickering in the local assembly over stupid things, it breaks my heart. What are we doing? Why are we so small? Why is our vision so narrow? Why is it about me, me, me, me?
We cannot just yell at people. It is because that manifestation is obscured to us that we get small. When we are in first love, we are not small. So let us not merely point at and pick at the symptoms, but get to the real cause.
Oh, Lord, give us grace to repent and come back to a living first-love relationship.
In the end, this travail turns itself into intercession. I have to say that, in some degree, everybody who sees God’s purpose must, in the end, be an intercessor—chosen to be an intercessor.
Have you accepted that calling in your life, interceding for the church? I do not know where you live right now. Maybe you live where there is an assembly trying to hold that testimony, or maybe you live where there is no such thing.
But are you an intercessor according to God’s heart, standing with the Lord for His desire for that place? Oh, how the Lord longs to hear the pleas for a home.
I am so fortunate. I live in New York City, and I go to a fellowship there with wonderful brothers and sisters. I happen to live in Manhattan. This particular group meets in Queens.
I get down on my knees, looking out my window, and I say, “Lord, I know You want a home in Manhattan. I know You want one in the Bronx, and in Brooklyn, and Staten Island.” There are five boroughs in New York City.
So, “Lord, here I am in Manhattan. I am on my knees. I am saying, ‘Lord, let this be Your home. God, build Your home.’”
I do not know if I will ever see that, but I know I am called to travail on behalf of that borough.
We are chosen by the very nature of what we have seen to pray, to prepare the ground.
I am so shallow. Sometimes I think God does something very quickly. Something happens, people come together, and I say, “Wow, it was amazing. God is working so fast.”
But if God is doing a work and establishing an assembly of people who understand God’s building and cooperate with it, He has taken years of preparation to get them to that place. It is not something that happens overnight.
As a matter of fact, travail is primary because the church, if it is going to be the real organism, has to be born. A living being has to be born. You cannot just put it together with glue and a good minister.
The only way something is born is by travail, as any woman knows. You travail over the child’s birth, and through travail something living happens.
You may be together with some people. You are just a congregation, as it were, but not the living organism yet. There needs to be travail, because those people need to come through some kind of death in order to come into what the Lord has in terms of life.
I was struck a number of years ago. I had not really read much of Brother Sparks, and somebody gave me that little book—I think it was called The Body of Christ, but I am not sure.
At that point, being a charismaniac, I was into anything like that. He had a section on the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and I said, “Oh, this should be good.”
Basically, what he said was this: today, everybody is seeking a personal baptism in the Holy Spirit, but in the Bible it was a corporate baptism.
He said, “Have we ever known, as an assembly together, the Holy Spirit coming down on us, infusing us into a living oneness?” I thought, “Whoa. That is bigger than somebody kneeling down by themselves and saying, ‘Bibbity-bobbity-boo.’”
A company of people, all together in one accord and in travail, so that the breath of the Holy Spirit comes down upon them. Together, they are fused into something; they are baptized together. Now, that is impressive.
That is exactly what happened in Jerusalem and in Cornelius’s house. Did you notice that? The only two things referred to as the baptism in the Holy Spirit were both corporate experiences.
There are many assemblies where everybody is filled with the Spirit, yet together they have never been baptized into a oneness in the reality of that. Do you understand what I am saying? How much there needs to be travail in these things.
If we are a chosen vessel, we are called upon to travail. Thirdly, I would say that if we are a chosen vessel, then the place where we are is no mistake.
Now, if you have definitely moved out of the will of God, that is another thing. But I have to say, two things bother me. One is how easily people take a job promotion as the will of God, especially when it means moving out of the area where they are in something that the Lord is doing—something alive.
How many times do you reckon you will ever be in an assembly of people with that ferment, where God is doing something and trying to bring something to birth? He is dealing; He is working. If you experience that two or three times in your life, you are a very fortunate person.
Right in the middle of this ferment, something happening, somebody gets a job in Kalamazoo and leaves. They go into a desert, where they exist in whatever church situation is happening there. Or they go to some megachurch and get lost in the thing, while God was working on them in the little assembly back over there.
Why do people skip out on it so easily? If God has put you someplace, you need to seriously consider before you jump out of there for some economic advancement.
The other thing I do not understand is how somebody can leave something so easily. If you are in a living, fermenting, developing assembly that God is trying to lay hold of, you are going to be under some pressure.
I know people leave. I just do not know how they can do it so cavalierly, like it is nothing. God has invested His whole life to get us saved, to begin to work in our lives, to give us a perspective of what He is doing, and He brings us among some people.
By His grace, He builds us and uses us, and then we easily say, “I am going somewhere else because there is some pressure.” I think when God does something, it is deep, well planned, and thorough. We need to be careful that our leaving does not just upset the whole thing.
I have some experience in that myself, and I regret it.
God is trying to do His work. I do not know where you have been placed. Maybe it is someplace where God is gathering some people, but they are not yet born into that thing God wants. Oh, be somebody who travails there. Be somebody who stands for the Lord’s will in that place.
If you are in something established, maybe God bless you. If you are in a place where the people understand these things of God’s purpose, then do not just sit there and be satisfied. Be a travailer for that place—that the Lord would keep them in reality and take the next generation and give them a fresh vision.
Pray that things do not get old; that we would come to repentance when we begin to move in ways of kingdom or leaven, or anything other than what the Lord wants according to Christ. May we be willing to repent, willing to cry out, and willing to pray.
Even if a situation is good, to hold the testimony, we need to continue to be faithful and allow the Lord to deal with us.
Maybe you are just with a few people. Let me say this: it has been my experience, being fortunate to hop around on my pogo stick in many different places, that there have been times when I gathered with two or three, just a small group of people, and they somehow stood in the fullness of the Lord.
In other words, you do not have to be a big group to know the fullness of the Lord’s purpose, heart, and life. It is His presence that is the testimony.
It may be only six or eight people, but if they are worshiping with all their hearts, and you come into the meeting and sense the wonderful presence of the Lord, oh, you could not ask for anything more.
Would you rather have two hundred people, come in, and sense human? You smell human flesh. No, I think you would choose the presence of the Lord.
Whatever size group you are gathering with, say, “Lord, we want Your fullness here. We give You our full heart. We are going to worship You.”
We have one guy who plays piano with one finger. All right, we will use him, and we are going to sing with all our hearts. We do not need twenty-six guitars. But we need hearts that really love the Lord and are glad we are together.
When His fullness is there, there is fullness of joy. It is not a question of numbers.
Maybe the Lord has placed you in a place where you are in a church situation, because every Christian must fellowship. If you are born again, there is an instinctive desire for fellowship in the body of Christ.
If you are going to some church somewhere—a denominational church or something like that—and that is God’s provision for you, then here is what I say: be an overcomer there.
Live with first love. Live as a house of love. Live as somebody who sees the Lord. Enter the prayer meetings and take hold of things. Encourage the saints. Take part in the Bible study. But do it with that first love that people can see. Do not just hide in the back.
Wherever the Lord has placed you, He has chosen you for that place. Let your light shine in that place.
Just two more things. If you are a chosen vessel, you will discover that the Lord is merciful.
I said that you see the full vision and enter into travail, and that is true. If you see something, God is going to deal with you. I know that is true. But you will discover that He is merciful.
He is so patient. He is so merciful. He waits such a long time for us to get something right.
You will discover that even as He is dealing with us—and sometimes dealing with us harshly—He is always merciful. He is always wise in how He does things, in the measure He does things, and in the timing of His doing things.
It is so good to be in that place where the Lord is dealing with us, because we discover the end: we discover Him through the dealing.
Finally, as we read in Matthew 11, because we are in the kingdom at this present time, brothers and sisters, we have to do violence to our self-life. There is no way around it. Our self-life is going to be dealt with.
If you see this matter of the church and the kingdom, let me ask you a question: when things go wrong, problems arise, people leave, or there is dissension, why are you surprised?
If you understand where we are in this kingdom matter, this struggle, this conflict, and if you are travailing, do not be surprised. Of course, it breaks our hearts if somebody leaves, because we are attached to them. But do not be surprised.
The more we get to know ourselves, the less surprised we are by anything we see. People are capable of all kinds of incredible things. Why be surprised?
We need to be violent with ourselves, stand against the enemy, and stand in Christ.
We need to be sure that we maintain first love, abiding in Him and He abiding in us on a daily basis. Do not become distracted. Do not let anything distract you from undistracted devotion to Christ, as the New American Standard says.
No matter what happens, are you going to let that affect your spiritual life? Some people get jaded over the struggles of church life and kingdom life. But actually, all it should do is break us.
Brothers and sisters, when we go through difficult times, we deserve much worse than that. We all are at fault when things happen. We were asleep, or we were proud, or we were using our own human resources. So we do not need to act proud or justify ourselves.
It is always a tragic thing whenever we see corruption, division, or something like that. But do not be surprised. Just humble yourself.
The testimony in these last days—I do not see a picture of it in the Bible as a strong group storming things. But I do see the church of Philadelphia, holding on to the Lord and to brotherly love, keeping His Word, praying, obeying when the door opens, and recognizing their weakness while holding that testimony.
Is that not amazing? Little weak Philadelphia, but they are holding the lampstand because they are trusting and holding the Lord.
In these last days, we need to understand the times in which we live. If you have only the feeling that it should all be ideal, you will be a disappointed loner. If you think it is all battle and there is no point to it, you are going to end up giving up the battle.
But if we look unto Jesus and say, “Lord, I do not know how You are going to do it, but I want what You want. Start with me,” the Lord will do something.
In the battle, we will learn things about the Lord that will be precious. Do not forget: the Lord has a trump card. Actually, I do not know what that means. Is that bridge? I do not know. He has an ace up His sleeve.
What is that? Through the many difficulties and struggles we go through, the Lord takes those things and puts something from every one of those moments up in the New Jerusalem. It has eternal value.
One day, when the New Jerusalem comes down, of course it will be people—you and me, the bride. But it will be precious stones and pearls and gold, because God has produced something.
We are part of a large production that God has been producing since the day of Pentecost. There is a tremendous structure unseen by our eyes, but we are going to be part of it. It is going to be beautiful.
There are many difficult times that you went through, but you stuck with the Lord. You are going to end up seeing how it paid off in the New Jerusalem. There is a work going on beyond our understanding that the Lord is doing in an eternal place where there is no corruption and nothing can take away.
Oh, let us be faithful. Let us store our treasures where they belong. Let us give ourselves to the Lord and let Him deal with us, whatever it takes, because we understand what He is doing.
He is building His perfect church, and He is doing it in the midst of a lot of satanic and fleshly opposition. But the Lord is going to win. When He comes back, there will be no more mystery. He is going to sit enthroned.
May He say, “Good job. Well done. Be faithful.”
Lord, how can we overcome except by Your life? But You went before us and overcame. Lord, You saw all those things so clearly. You saw the enemy’s ugly hand, even among Your own twelve disciples. Yet You kept on sowing.
Oh, Lord, we want to overcome by the very life that overcame. We thank You, Lord, that You have given us not only the provision of Your life, but even the encouragement in the lives of my brothers and sisters.
Lord, we want to be faithful unto You. Oh, Lord, we say that with trembling. There is so much to disappoint us, so many ways the enemy would make us defeated and depressed, so many things where our best hopes were dashed, so many times where it seems we have to start all over again.
But through it all, we sense Your life rise up and say, “Take hold of Me. We will go through together.” Oh, Lord, give us that kind of ear to hear in these last days, and the grace to be faithful to You.
Oh, Lord, we do not have an assembly here that is perfect, but may there be some who are worthy to hold the testimony of Jesus. When people come into the midst, may they say, “Jesus is here.” Oh, may that be, that His presence would be real in our midst, Lord.
We are willing to pay the price for Your presence. We want Your testimony. Lord, that is probably the only thing really precious we have in the assembly. Lord, if You take Your presence from us, we have nothing.
Many small groups seem isolated, but we see our largeness now, gathered with other friends in Christ. Oh, Lord, grant us to be those through whom You can reveal Your presence, Your love, and Your saving work.
Lord, we give You these messages. We know that You want us to live in the church all the days of our lives. Oh, Lord, we want to live today in the day of the mystery, abiding in You and in Your house.
Teach us Your ways, O Lord, and how to live in these last days. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.