The Lord really has blessed us with many spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus.
Last week, at the end of the message that I shared on faith and truth, I think Jim read this hymn, which so expressed what was on my heart. I think it is so good that a brother, in probably thirty seconds of verse, could express my whole message that I spent an hour on. Maybe we should just read the songs from now on.
Jesus, I come to Thee
Out of my bondage and spiritual darkness.
Lord, we come to Thee this morning. We look to Thee that You would really be able to touch our hearts, Lord, and not just our minds today; that You would anoint us, Lord Jesus, that we could both speak and hear.
Lord, may Your word become living and real to us, and not just another little document we file away in our heads. Lord, we come to Thee today. We ask Your blessing upon our time, Lord Jesus. We ask for that living word. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
As I begin this morning, I just want to remind the saints once again about this new book, Journeying Towards the Spiritual, which is a synopsis of The Spiritual Man, originally written by Watchman Nee. I would encourage us all to read this. It is a little easier to read than the six-hundred-page volume that our brother Watchman Nee put out.
But I was particularly encouraged that one of our young men was reading this book, because it is about becoming spiritual and not just remaining a Christian, but becoming a spiritual Christian.
A lot of times, as we get older, we forget that we are never to stop growing in Christ. If we ever stop growing in Christ, we have gone backwards, and we are no longer spiritual. So we do need to be aware of this spiritual progress that should be taking place in our lives.
So this morning, my subject is sons of the kingdom. Actually, it is a continuation of the message on faith and truth, and shortly you will find out how these two burdens are connected.
Let us begin this morning by reading from Luke 4.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
And He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him.
And He began to say unto them, Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears.
And then Luke 4:43:
But He said unto them, I must preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God to the other cities also: for therefore was I sent.
“I must preach the kingdom of God, for that is why I am sent.”
Wednesday night, the Lord Jesus gave our brother Kenny a burden on awakening: that we live in an hour when our Lord Jesus is soon to return, and we need to be awakened to the hour in which we live. We need to be awakened out of sleep. We need to be awakened to our spiritual condition. We need to be awakened to where we may have departed from Christ, and awakened to this very hour in which we are living today and the condition that we are in.
And that really touched me, that burden of being awakened. It affected me concerning this message on faith and truth that I had given. I was reminded of the Lord, when He spoke in Luke 4:18, that He had come to set the captives free.
So I went back to that Scripture and reread it. It was the burden of my heart that it takes faith—faith in the truth—in order to be set free, to be delivered. That was the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ on this earth, and it is His ministry even this day.
But there seemed to be more that awakens us to the hour we are in. In Luke 4:43, it really clarifies it. He says, “I must preach the kingdom of God, for that is why I am sent.” In other words, people needed to be set free, for the kingdom of God was about to come on this earth. As a matter of fact, as we will see, it had come.
The Lord was trying to awaken the people to the hour in which they lived.
Interestingly enough, four hundred years prior to our Lord’s first coming, God had been silent. He had spoken through the prophet Malachi to the remnant who had returned to build the house of God and to build the wall of testimony. Even these had departed from the Lord.
In the book of Malachi, we see the Lord reminding His people, speaking to His people, trying to get them to return to Him. But unfortunately, they did not. The Lord fell silent for four hundred years. No voice was heard until the Lord raised up John the Baptist.
John announced, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” It electrified the nation of Israel, because that is what they had been wanting to hear. They were under the oppression of the Roman government at that time, and they wanted a deliverer. They had not heard from God for four hundred years, and now there was this voice—John the Baptist—speaking and preparing the way of the Lord.
In the book of Malachi, as the Lord had warned His people, He spoke to them about four basic areas of their life.
First was their spiritual life before Him. He said, “You no longer honor Me nor fear Me.” Now remember, these are the ones who had returned to build the house and the wall. They had done that, but as life went on, they began to depart from the Lord.
He approached them about their worship of Him and how they were bringing to Him offerings that were no longer acceptable. In other words, their heart was no longer in it. Even those who offered offerings brought flawed offerings—animals that had flaws.
He said, “I cannot accept the worship. I cannot accept it. I must have heart worship, spiritual worship. I cannot be satisfied with those who just come and are religious. I need those who honor Me and honor My name.”
He spoke to them about their moral corruption. The people said, “Everyone that does evil is good.” In other words, the basic thought was, “Okay, I may sin, but it is really okay, because we are the Lord’s. We are God’s people. I may sin, but I am okay. It is all right.”
And we hear that same voice today, brothers and sisters, even within our midst. Sometimes we take on the attitude of, “Okay, I know I am sinning, but I know the Lord will forgive me.”
Somehow the Lord cannot reach our hearts that indeed this is dissatisfactory to Him. This is not the life that He has called us to. It is certainly not a spiritual life or a spiritual Christian, but what the Bible refers to as a carnal Christian—one who is saved, but one who is not spiritual; one who is not following the Lord; one who is still under the bondage of sin.
He approached them about their social life. Basically, they had become just like the world around them. They were beginning to marry into heathen families and those who knew not God, and they were bringing other gods in, mixing other gods in with the living God.
He said, “You have become like those around you. There is no distinction anymore.”
He spoke to them about their materialism—how they had stopped giving offerings and tithes to the Lord’s house and to the Lord’s service. Those who did give, gave grudgingly or in a legalistic way, certainly not out of a heart that loved Him.
So in every area of their life, the Lord pointed out to them their condition. But they really did think they were okay. They could not see it, and even after the Lord pointed it out through the prophet Malachi, unfortunately they did not change.
You know what the Lord’s heart was through the prophet Malachi? He says, “Return to Me, and I will return to you.” My brothers and sisters, they did not respond.
You would think that if you got such a direct word from the Lord, you would respond. But that shows you the deceitfulness of our own flesh within. They really thought they were okay, and they did not return.
So the Lord finally fell silent and left them to their own devices. Eventually, the Roman government had them in servitude and subjection to them. They were basically slaves to the Roman government.
When the Lord Jesus came to His hometown of Nazareth, He stood up in the assembly there and said, “I have come to set the captives free.”
Many of them did not even realize they were in bondage. As a matter of fact, in John 8:32-33—that Scripture I spoke on last week—Jesus said:
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
When the Lord said that, their response was, “We are children of Abraham. We have never been in bondage or subject to any man.” Brothers and sisters, they were under bondage to the Roman government, and they did not even see that as bondage. They did not even realize they should be free.
The Lord said to them, “He who sins is a servant of sin.” He knew that their bondage to the Roman government was just an indication that there was something wrong inside. They were indeed slaves and in bondage, but they did not recognize it.
The King was there. The King had arrived. It was their hour, brothers and sisters. It was a day of visitation from the Lord. He had finally come. The Messiah had come. It was their hour, their day, but they did not know it. They did not know the time or the hour in which they were living.
The Lord said to them, “I have not only come to set you free, but I have come to set up My kingdom on this earth.”
But as the Lord looked around, He saw no subjects of the King. He saw no sons of the kingdom there.
There is a little difference in the wording. I said “subjects,” and then “sons of the kingdom.” I see subjects of the kingdom as those who are, like today, born again but not really following the Lord.
But He is looking for sons of the kingdom, that He might set up His kingdom—sons who are responsible in the things of God and in their lives before God. Therefore, they are sons of the kingdom. He was looking for sons of the kingdom.
He was the King. As a matter of fact, He was the kingdom.
Now, when I say that, it is because He fully represented God on this earth. Finally, after four hundred years, there was a testimony to God on this earth, and that testimony was Jesus Christ Himself. The kingdom was actually here, but He was the only one in the kingdom.
He told them that His purpose was the kingdom. Because He could not find sons of the kingdom to establish His kingdom on this earth, He had a plan. His plan was to set the captives free.
But the nation of Israel itself, frankly, had to be set aside because they were not ready. He said, “I will have a people from the nations—sons of the kingdom. I will redeem a people, that God might have His kingdom on this earth. The way I will do it is that I will deliver the captives. I will set the captives free.”
Last week, when I shared on faith and truth, that was really my heart, brothers and sisters: that we can live our Christian lives and not really be aware that we are captives. The only way to be set free is faith in the truth.
The truth is that Jesus Christ has not only come and died for our sins, but, brothers and sisters, we have been put in Christ, taken to the cross with Him. The old man has been crucified with Him. This is spiritual truth. This is spiritual reality.
But we tend to live in the reality of our feelings and our own personal experiences. When we look at those, we say, “No, we are not sons of the kingdom, really. We are failures, and there is no hope.”
But brothers and sisters, hope has been given. The Deliverer has come. He has done all the work on Calvary’s cross to set us free from the bondage of sin and death.
That is what faith is about. When the Lord Jesus touches your heart with a living word and you see that, in fact, you have been crucified with Christ, then you are set free from the bondage of sin, from the power of sin.
It is the same with the self-life, this life that wants to serve itself, wants to please itself, and is more interested in itself than in the things of God. The Lord has crucified that old man.
Maybe this will help. I mentioned last week also about the victory that we have in Jesus: praying for victory never seems to work. In fact, it does not.
But when you see the victory that has already been won in Christ, you can apply that to the situation you are in at that time. If, in faith, you see it, then you will have victory. It may not be immediate, but the Lord will bring victory, because wherever there is faith in His victory, that victory comes.
That is the way we have dominion.
It is the same way with the old man. We still have the sin nature. On one hand, the Word says that the flesh with its passions and lusts has been crucified, and it says that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
So do not be mistaken: the sinful nature within you has not been obliterated through the Lord’s crucifixion on the cross. It is a spiritual reality in Christ, but you still have that sinful nature and will until the Lord comes again.
You still have the self-life, but the Lord has made provision for both. He says, “If you will have faith in the spiritual reality and apply it whenever the lust of the flesh wants to come forth, if you apply what I have done at Calvary, then it will become real, because it is real.”
In other words, you have to make what God has done for you, spiritually achieved for you, real and practical in your life, and that is done by faith.
You will never, ever gain faith if you are always trying to observe your experience and waiting until it happens before you can believe it. I did it for years. I said, “Lord, it does not work.” That was my response. I said, “I see Your word, but it does not seem to work.”
It was because I was looking for something inside that testified to the reality, when in fact the reality was out there—it was with Christ. I had to look at Him and finally believe, “Lord, You have done it. I believe it.”
Now, when that sinful nature comes forth and wants to rise up, I can apply what Christ has done on the cross to the flesh, having been crucified. I find that through the Spirit, He makes it real and makes it inoperative.
It is the same way with the self-life. It is much more difficult with the self-life because self is what we tenaciously hang on to.
But the Lord said He handles the self-life a little differently. He said, concerning the self-life, “You must deny self and take up the cross.” Because the old man has been crucified, which includes self, you can apply that to your self-life.
Whenever self wants to rise up, wants to please itself instead of God, wants to have self-pity or self-love, you can say, “Lord, I believe You. I deny this one.”
I like the way Stephen, I think, put it a long time ago. He said, “What does it mean to deny self? It means you do not recognize him. You just do not recognize that old man anymore.”
You say, “No, I do not recognize you. I only recognize the life of Christ in me. That is what I recognize.”
You remember, when the Lord Jesus went to the cross, the crowds cried, “Away with Him.” They denied Him: “Away with Him.” Peter himself denied the Lord and said, “I do not know the man.”
That should be our response when we see the old man trying to rise again—that self-life. We deny it. We say, “I do not know it. Away with it.”
Through the Spirit of God and that new life you have within, that new life will take the preeminence in your life, that you might not be in bondage.
But brothers and sisters, what we find in our lives personally, often, is that we are not free. We are not free from the power of sin. We find that we are captive to the power of sin. We find that we are captive to the self-life. We are captive to our circumstances, captive to passivity—defeated and not victorious.
But the Lord has set us free. The story I used last week was that the Lord has already given you the key. If you are in that cell, locked in and chained, He has already given you the key to unlock that lock, that you can come into the freedom that He has already purchased and died for.
He has set the captive free, that He might have sons of the kingdom.
What are we set free for?
As I went to see my mother last week, I bought one of those iPods from the Titus Ministry that has all the messages on it. I was listening to a message Stephen had given at another conference somewhere—I cannot remember where—but it was on the kingdom through the prophet Daniel.
As I listened to that, I said, “Lord, I missed something very important that I have not shared with the brothers and sisters.”
I have shared with them that indeed they are free in Christ, and that faith is something that comes from God, and if you can believe it, then you are free. But what are we free for? What are we set free for? That is what I had missed. I had only seen the narrow picture.
That is why I went back to Luke, where the Lord said, “I have come to set the captive free.” I wanted to see what else He said, and I see that what else He said is, “Look, the kingdom is here. I have to preach the kingdom.”
The two are greatly connected. He has set us free that we might become sons of the kingdom.
Another little review, if you do not mind. I think Stephen shared probably a year ago on this matter of the kingdom, and I think it might be helpful to have a little reminder.
There are two perspectives, or views, of the kingdom of God in the Bible—two perspectives, two views. One is a broad view.
When we think of the kingdom, we think of a king with sovereign rule over a dominion: a sovereign ruler over a dominion.
In the broad view, the Lord is sovereign over all of His creation. He is sovereign over everything. Everything is ultimately subject to Him.
That was Daniel’s testimony. He said, “God rules over the affairs of men.” All that is going on in this world today, ultimately God is ruling over it. Even all the things that are going on in Iraq, in Iran, and in the Middle East—all the things that we are concerned about—God, in His sovereign way, is ruling over all of that.
That is the broad view. As a matter of fact, even Satan himself, if you remember in the book of Job, had to get permission from God before he could do anything with Job. That just shows that God is sovereign over all things, over all that He has created.
But there is a narrower view of the kingdom, a stricter view of the kingdom. That is, He is sovereign and rules over those who willingly give Him obedience and submission.
Wherever there is obedience and submission unto Christ, there is the kingdom.
Why was it that, when our Lord Jesus came to this earth, He said, “The kingdom is here”? Why did He say that? I said before that the Lord is not only the King, but He is the kingdom.
It is because, brothers and sisters, He fully and totally submitted to God the Father. He was totally obedient to God the Father, even to death on the cross.
At no time in His life was He ever disobedient. At no time in His life did He ever act out of His own self, out of His self-life, or for Himself. It was always by the life of God that He moved and worked.
He never used His own self-life, even though it was a pure self-life—certainly not like our self-life. So He represented the kingdom of God on this earth when He came, because God had His kingdom. He had His Servant who was perfectly submissive and obedient. There is God’s kingdom.
When the Lord first created everything, including the angels, in a sense both the narrow view and the broad view were the same, because it was all harmonious. There were no flaws. There was nothing wrong in His kingdom. Everything was submissive and obedient to Him.
Until Lucifer began to think about himself, his own attributes, and how he did not feel like he was given the proper honor and place in God’s kingdom. Because of that self-consciousness, disharmony came in.
He wanted to have the place that the Son had, and God threw him out. Actually, he led a rebellion, and a third of the angels followed Lucifer into rebellion against God.
Brothers and sisters, that is why those who are in rebellion today against God, unwilling to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, are going to hell. The reason they are is because they are going to follow Satan. They are going to follow him, their leader, and that is where he is going.
A tremendous thing happened at that time. He was cast out upon this earth, or into the atmosphere around this earth, and probably it affected the galaxy that we are in as well. It says that the earth became void and was dark, and water covered everything.
In other words, Satan set up a kingdom of darkness that was in opposition to God’s kingdom, which we know as the kingdom of life.
So God moved. He still wanted His kingdom on this earth, and it had been overthrown. So He created man. What did He tell man? He said, “Have dominion.” He gave man dominion over this earth, that he might represent the kingdom of God on this earth.
But He tested man with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He said, “You can eat of any tree in the garden except one.”
We know how the enemy, the king of darkness, came in and influenced Eve and Adam, and they fell. Therefore, God did not have His kingdom that He had wanted on this earth.
It was through Adam and Eve, who were supposed to have sons and daughters, to come to the tree of life and eat of it, and to propagate the life of Christ throughout this earth, that the kingdom of God would be established. But it faltered and fell with Adam.
Eventually—and you will see where I am going with all this history, but it is important—He raised up Abraham. Through Abraham, what did He do? He raised up the nation of Israel.
They were to be a testimony to Him on this earth. As a matter of fact, He said, “If you will keep My covenant, I will make you a kingdom of priests on this earth.” Through you, the earth will have My kingdom, and eventually My kingdom will come.
Well, brothers and sisters, it does appear that the Lord did have a testimony to His kingdom during the period of David and Solomon. He had His representation on this earth.
But we know that soon afterward the people turned and rebelled against God, and God had to bring judgment upon His testimony. Babylon came in and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, the physical testimony to the Lord on this earth.
There was no longer any testimony on this earth to the Lord’s name. His kingdom was no longer represented at that time.
But praise God, He was able to touch Cyrus, the king of Persia, and also some fifty thousand people out of the millions of Israelites who lived at that time. Fifty thousand did go back to Jerusalem to rebuild it, to build a temple, to build a wall, that there might be a testimony to Jesus on this earth.
There would be a place where the Lord could say, “Yes, My kingdom is there.”
They rebuilt the temple and rebuilt the wall. But brothers and sisters, it is amazing, if you read the history, how quickly after they had built that wall their hearts began to turn.
In fact, if you read Nehemiah 13, you find that their hearts were already turning. That is when Malachi was raised up to speak to the people, to the remnant, of their falling away and their need to return to Him—the conditions that I just read about.
Brothers and sisters, these were not just any children of His. These were ones who had had the heart to come back to be a testimony to the Lord. These were the ones who had a real heart for the Lord, and their children as they grew up. But unfortunately, so quickly, their heart moved away.
The Lord fell silent for four hundred years after that. There was no testimony to His name. The temple was destroyed. No testimony.
But Christ came, brothers and sisters. He was God’s kingdom on this earth: perfect, absolute submission and obedience. There was no disharmony between Him and God.
The earth finally had the kingdom of God upon it. It was restored in the person of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, you remember how Satan tempted our Lord. He was in the desert for forty days and nights, and the enemy tempted Him. Finally, the enemy had to leave. The Lord really defeated the enemy at that time.
He had defeated the enemy. He had brought the kingdom of God to this earth. On the Mount of Transfiguration, He could have gone back to the throne, and the work of establishing the kingdom would have been completed.
Brothers and sisters, this is the part that should touch our hearts so deeply. God wanted many sons in His kingdom, like His Son Jesus—fully submissive, fully obedient. That was His heart: sons of the kingdom.
Because of His heart that loved you and me so much, He also had to do the work of redemption. It was necessary for Him to go to Calvary in order that God might have many sons, many sons of the kingdom, and for God’s purpose to be fully fulfilled.
Christ chose not to leave us out. So what did He do? He went to Calvary, and He set the prisoner free—all who would believe on Him.
That is true today. I do not know if you believe in Jesus Christ or not. I think most here do. They have a real, living faith in Christ.
And you have become a candidate to become a son of the kingdom.
Now, a lot of times we think we are sons of the kingdom because we are saved, but that is not accurate. We have all the possibilities to become sons of the kingdom.
Let us say it another way. When we are saved, we are children of the kingdom, because it says we have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of life.
But sons of the kingdom are those who will reign and rule with Christ during the thousand-year kingdom age. That means we have to come into some maturity. There has to be something of the life of Christ operating in us.
Therefore, the Lord had to set us free. That is why the old man was crucified. He said, “Adam—that failed Adamic life that you have in you—will never become a son of the kingdom. That is why I am crucifying it. I am taking him out of the picture. You need to believe that and accept that.”
That new life, the life of Christ that is in you, has to grow. It has to mature. It has to come into the place where you can be considered a son—sonship. We have spoken of it before: exercising dominion on this earth.
That is why His kingdom will come on this earth, brothers and sisters.
We do need to reawaken to the hour in which we live. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He said, “The night is far spent.” When the Lord was here, He said, “The night is far spent. It is almost over.”
This delay that we have known for two thousand years, brothers and sisters, is because God is longsuffering, and He wants many sons of the kingdom.
How He longs for His kingdom to be set up on this earth. But there have to be sons of the kingdom.
So He is waiting for us to mature. He is waiting for us not only individually but corporately to mature, which Kenny has been sharing on.
When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, there was no testimony. The Lord said at that time, “Okay, I am turning over power out of the hands of Israel, and I am giving it to the Gentile nations.”
And He did: Babylon, Persia, Greece, then the Roman Empire.
He said, “I am going to give it to the Gentiles, and Jerusalem will be trodden under the foot of the Gentiles until I get ready to return.”
Jerusalem has been under the foot of the Gentiles, brothers and sisters, technically really since Babylon. There was one brief period during the Maccabees when it was free, until 1967—almost forty years ago.
During the Six-Day War, Jerusalem came under full control of the nation of Israel.
Now, unless the Lord does something different, unless Jerusalem falls back under the control of the Gentile nations, it certainly appears that 1967 marks the end of the age of the Gentiles. The Lord said, “I am coming soon.”
If the night was far spent two thousand years ago, if forty years ago the age of the Gentiles came to an end, certainly we are at the end of the transition time when God is transferring the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of Christ and bringing in the kingdom age.
That is what happened to David. It says that his men gathered together at Hebron to transfer the kingdom of Saul to the kingdom of David. That is what we are in the process of this very hour. We are in the age and the hour when the kingdom is about to be transferred to Christ.
How is this going to be done? How will the transfer take place?
Very quickly, because my time is coming to an end: the Lord’s way is that He will have sons of the kingdom on this earth—those who are matured, those who can stand for the Lord, those who are submissive and obedient to Him—who are really His kingdom on this earth.
He has, like, an outpost on this earth—hopefully here in Richmond, an outpost. All over this earth, in different places, He has raised up a testimony to Himself: a testimony of brothers and sisters building the house of God, the bride maturing and coming into sonship.
As we grow and mature in Christ, as we begin to take on more and more of Christ in our life, the kingdom expands.
One day, those sons of the kingdom—those overcomers, as this is referred to in Revelation—will rise.
They will go not just to the clouds to meet the Lord at the judgment seat, but before that occurs, these sons of the kingdom will arise and actually break through the atmosphere, Satan’s domain of darkness, and go to the throne, clearing a pathway for the Lord to come back.
When the Lord comes back, He will establish His kingdom on this earth, and the sons of the kingdom will reign and rule with Him for a thousand years.
How did they overcome? How did the Lord Jesus overcome Satan, brothers and sisters?
It says that when Satan tempted our Lord, he could not find anything in Him. In other words, there was nothing of self that he could find, nothing of sin that he could find. No ground could he find in the Lord Jesus to attack Him.
In other words, it was the character and nature of our Lord Jesus Christ that overcame the enemy.
That is what a son of the kingdom is: those who have denied themselves, taken up the cross, and followed Him in obedience and submission. Sons of the kingdom. The character of Christ is developed in their life.
Because of that character of Christ developed in their life, they are able to break through the stronghold of the enemy. That is the only reason they are able to do it.
I want to say just one last thought.
We are children of God. If we have accepted Christ, we are His children.
But we may not be sons of the kingdom because we have not been obedient. We have not lived a submissive life to the Lord. We have been more interested in ourselves, and therefore the character of Christ has not been allowed to be developed in our life.
We are not really sons of the kingdom. But you know what? For every Christian, the kingdom is his birthright. When you accept Jesus Christ, the kingdom is your birthright.
But we, like Esau, can give up our birthright because of the things that we want now, of pleasing ourselves now instead of the Lord.
Is that not what Esau did? He just wanted this little bowl of soup, and he gave up his birthright for it because he did not think much of the birthright. It did not mean a lot to him. It was something in the future.
But later he cried with tears, and it says he could not find repentance.
Brothers and sisters, it is all on my heart. We need to be free, and thank God that through Calvary we have been set free.
But to come into that freedom, we need to exercise faith. We need to believe that the Lord has indeed set us free, that we are a new creation in Him, that the old man has been crucified, and that the self-life can now be denied by taking up the cross.
We agree with the Lord that all of that Adamic life, that self-life, can never serve God. As we do these things, as we take up the cross in our life, His character is built in us, and we can become sons of the kingdom.
I do not know if the kingdom age means much to us now. It should.
It is a thousand years—being with the Lord, reigning and ruling with the Lord, serving Him, serving His people, serving the nations. It is going to be quite an era.
The lion will lie down with the lamb. There will be peace. If there is any discord, the Lord will immediately deal with it. It will be the utopia that man is always looking for.
But I think, more than anything, God has wanted His kingdom upon this earth ever since Satan was rejected, and He will finally have it.
But He wants there to be sons of the kingdom with His own Son, Christ. Do not give up the kingdom for a few pleasures today.
Lord, we come to Thee. Lord, only by Your Spirit can we be awakened—awakened to what we are, where we are, to the hour in which we live, Lord, and to the importance of the kingdom.
Lord, only You can awaken us because, Lord, we are dull of hearing. We are much like the people in Malachi’s time. Lord, we came out of the religious world. We came to join together to be a testimony of Christ on this earth.
And yet, Lord, we are in danger of falling away from the very thing that is on Your heart.
Lord, we thank You. We worship You. We praise You. Lord, I would say, please arrest our hearts this day, Lord. Do not let us get away from Your purpose.
Oh Lord, we thank You for Your plan of salvation. We thank You for all the work of Calvary. Lord, it is marvelous—Lord, to be set free. What a marvelous thing.
Lord, keep us from using our liberty for our own purposes. May we use this liberty that You have given us for Your purpose. We ask that You do this in the name of Jesus.