Will you please turn to Revelation?
Revelation 1:9:
I John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, as we gather together in Thy presence, it is the cry of our heart that Thou shalt come back. We thank Thee that Thou hast promised us that Thou wilt come quickly, and we are here waiting for Thee.
Do prepare us that, when we shall see Thy face, there will be no shame, that we may gladden Thy heart, knowing that by Thy grace we have followed Thee all the way.
Do prepare us for Thyself. Even at this late hour, Lord, prepare us that we may follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. We commit this time into Thy loving hands.
Speak, Lord; Thy servants hear. Do finish the work that Thou hast begun in us, that Thou mayest be glorified. We ask all in Thy precious name. Amen.
Amen.
Well, thank the Lord for gathering us together this morning. We are gathered here for one purpose: we want to learn the way of recovering the testimony of Jesus.
We know that it is the will of God that the testimony of Jesus shall be known throughout the whole world, and He has committed this to His own church.
We do regret that, in church history, we find that the church has failed again and again in that mission. But thank God: men may fail, but God never fails.
So He is always doing the work of the recovery of His own testimony. We are now at the very end of the end, and we believe that it is the will of God that that recovery will be fully realized.
That is the reason why we are here: to learn the way to the recovery of the testimony of Jesus.
As I said, we remember that at the first coming of our Lord Jesus, there were a few brothers and sisters who were really waiting and preparing the way for the Lord’s coming.
Even though it seemed as if the whole Jewish nation was waiting for the coming of the Messiah, actually there were only a few who were really preparing for the coming of the Messiah.
And we believe that at His second coming, this will be the same thing. God is looking for some who are ready and prepared for His coming.
Who are those people? They are the people who have the testimony of Jesus.
So we find in Revelation 1:9 that John said:
I John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus, was in the isle called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus.
The reason why the apostle John was exiled to that island was because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. How came it that he had the testimony of Jesus? Because he was in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus.
We believe that these three things—tribulation, kingdom, and endurance—are the ways to the recovery of the testimony of Jesus.
When you look at tribulation, it seems to be so negative. Yet God can use that negative means to accomplish a positive purpose. If we can see tribulation from God’s viewpoint, then we will really profit by it.
We find that tribulation will really recover us to the testimony of Jesus. We had fellowship concerning that on Thursday morning.
Now, this morning, we would like to go into the second point: the kingdom is the way to the recovery of the testimony of Jesus.
I do not know, brothers and sisters, how much we know about the kingdom. But if we search the Word of God, we find that the kingdom of God—the kingdom of heaven—is the theme of the Word of God.
We remember Colossians 1:13:
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
Formerly, we were in the kingdom of darkness. We were under the authority of the enemy of God, even though we may not have been conscious of it. But that was the fact.
But thank God, He has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and He has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
Oftentimes, we think of being saved only in terms of having our sins forgiven, so that one day we may go to heaven. We do not realize that there is something far greater that God has done.
Not only have our sins been forgiven, and not only has He given us eternal life, but something greater has happened: He has delivered us from the authority of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His love.
We may use the history of the children of Israel as an example. We find that they were slaves in Egypt. They were put under hard labor, and they were not even allowed to live. All the male children had to be thrown into the River Nile.
They had no hope. They were under the iron rule of Pharaoh. They cried unto God, and God delivered them.
We know that not only by the Passover lamb were they delivered from death, but God also delivered them out of Egypt and translated them into His own kingdom. He brought them to Himself.
What a deliverance that was.
When we come to the New Testament, we find that what was physically done to the children of Israel happened to us spiritually. Even though, so far as our physical bodies are concerned, we are still in this world, this world has not changed a bit. Indeed, it has become worse and worse.
The world is still under the authority of darkness. Men are still groping in darkness. They do not know where they are going, and the end is eternal death. There is no hope and no God. That was our former situation.
But thank God, He has delivered us out of the authority of darkness. We are no longer under the authority of Satan, the enemy of God. We belong to another kingdom—not the kingdom of this world, but the kingdom of the Son of God.
The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is where we are today.
So, dear brothers and sisters, first of all we need to understand that, when we are saved, there is a great transference. We are no longer of the world.
As our Lord Jesus said in John 17:
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Even though we are still in the world, we do not belong to it. We belong to the heavenly kingdom. Our citizenship is in heaven, and we are under another authority: the authority of the Son of God’s love.
In other words, all who are saved are now in the kingdom of the heavens. That is our position. That is what God has done to us.
You remember when our Lord Jesus began His public ministry. Not only did His forerunner, John, preach, but John proclaimed:
Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
When our Lord Jesus began His public ministry, He proclaimed the same message:
Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Now, we know that the children of Israel were supposed to be God’s people, and they were quite religious. They had the temple, the five books of Moses, the prophets, the priests, and all the ceremonies. Outwardly, they appeared to be very religious.
Yet God’s message to them was, “Repent.” For four hundred years God was silent, and now God suddenly began to speak. His word to His people was, “Repent.”
Do not think that you are going in the right direction. Everything was wrong. You need to turn around. For what reason? Because the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.
When our Lord Jesus began to preach, He did the same thing. He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh.”
Our Lord Jesus is the King of the kingdom of heaven. He came from heaven, and He came to establish His kingdom upon this earth. But at that time He had no people.
If you have a king without people, you do not have a kingdom. So even though our Lord Jesus had already come, He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh.”
The King had come. He was born King, but He had no people and therefore no kingdom. So He said, “Repent. The kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh unto you.”
If you repent, if you turn around, if you believe in Him, and if you put yourself under His kingship, then He will have His kingdom. The kingdom of heaven will have come into this world.
Thank God, there were people who truly repented, truly turned around, and believed in Him. They not only believed in Him, but they followed Him.
When our Lord Jesus was preaching, He began to call for disciples. Those who believed in Him had to commit themselves to Him and put themselves under His kingship, that He might make them sons of the kingdom—not only positionally, but conditionally.
So, dear brothers and sisters, it is very important to see that there should be no division between believing and committing.
Today the gospel is often preached in such a way that it becomes a so-called cheap gospel. People say that if you believe in Him, you are saved and can go to heaven. That is all.
But we forget that the gospel is a full gospel, and salvation is a great salvation. God saves us not according to our need, but according to His purpose and according to His glory.
He does not merely want to save us out of hell and into heaven. That may satisfy us, but it will not satisfy God. He wants to save us until He is satisfied. He wants to save us to the uttermost, that we may become sons of the kingdom.
Believing in the Lord Jesus and submitting to the Lord Jesus—these two things ought to be one. If you become a believer, you must be a disciple. There should be no division between believer and disciple.
After the Lord began to preach, He called for disciples. Now, who are the disciples?
When our Lord called for disciples, He was walking on the seashore of Galilee. He saw two brothers there, Simon Peter and Andrew, and He called them:
Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their boat and followed the Lord. A little further on, He saw the two sons of Zebedee. He called them, and they left their father and the boat and followed the Lord.
You find that the call for disciples closely follows the call to believe.
What is the difference between these two things? To believe in the Lord Jesus is to receive grace from the Lord, but it can still be concerned with self. To be a disciple is to surrender your life to Him, and He becomes the reason for your life.
These two things should be together. How can we believe in Him, receive all His mercy and grace, and keep these things merely for ourselves? We ought to surrender our whole life to the One who loves us.
He has loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. He has made us a kingdom. That is Revelation 1:6.
All who believe in the Lord Jesus are at the same time called to be His disciples.
The disciple, as we find in the Word of God, is very different from the modern concept of a student.
Today, if you become a student, you pay some money and enter into a school. You sit in a room, listen to your professor, and try to absorb all that he knows. You are there simply for learning, but you are still independent. You still live your own life. You are free.
But a disciple is different. A disciple is like an apprentice in the old days. I think most of you young people do not know what an apprentice was.
In the old days, apprenticeship was a way of life. When a boy grew up, he would be apprenticed to a master. Suppose you wanted to be a carpenter. How did you learn carpentry in the old days? It was by becoming an apprentice.
You chose a master carpenter, and after the contract was signed, you left your home to live with your master. You became a part of his family.
Usually during the first year, he would not even allow you to touch the instruments. What were you doing during that first year? You would help clean the house, hold the babies, and serve at the table, just like a servant.
You might say, “Why did I come here? I came to learn a skill.” But no—that was the way of apprenticeship.
There is a real meaning in it. An apprentice is learning more than a skill; he is learning a life.
Maybe after a year, the master would allow you to touch the tools. He would show you some of the secrets. After you finished your apprenticeship, you had not only learned the skill of your master; you had learned the life of the master.
You would walk like him. You would talk like him. Everything would be like him. That is the wonder of apprenticeship.
And this is discipleship, brothers and sisters. We who believe in the Lord Jesus are all called to be His disciples, because discipleship is to make us sons of the kingdom.
Maybe you have heard the story of our dear brother Watchman Nee. When he was young, he was very gifted. As a young man, he had his own future and his own friends, even though he was born into a Christian family. As a matter of fact, he was a third-generation Christian.
It was remarkable that he was in a Christian college, and yet he did not believe in the Lord.
But one day he was greatly touched by his mother. His mother was a very strong woman—I know it, because she treated me like that.
Brother Nee hated his mother because she treated him harshly. But when his mother was saved, she wanted to have family devotions. So she called the family together. She went to the piano and wanted to pray.
The Spirit of God touched her, and the Lord said, “Go and confess to your son.” She could not do it. In China, this was not the custom. The parents were always right.
But the Spirit of God would not let her go. So she got up, went to her son, put her arms around him, and asked him to forgive her.
That touched the heart of our brother very deeply.
When he was invited to hear Dr. Dora Yu, he said, “Anyone who converted my mother is worth hearing.” On the first night, he was convicted. He knew that he was a sinner and that the Lord Jesus was the only Saviour in the world.
But he could not believe. He struggled, because he understood that if he believed in the Lord Jesus, he had to surrender his life to Jesus as his Lord.
This he could not do, because he had his own plans and his own ambitions. He struggled over this for days.
One evening, he was in his room and began to pray. He told us that he saw the blackness of his sin and the redness of the blood of the Lord Jesus.
He was so constrained by the love of Christ that he surrendered himself.
Brothers and sisters, unfortunately today the gospel is so preached that it becomes a cheap gospel. It seems as if you get everything, even Christ, around you. You are the center of the universe.
You misunderstand the nature of the gospel. The gospel is not only the gospel of grace; the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. They are not two gospels, but one gospel.
Grace leads to the kingdom, and the kingdom shows us what grace really is.
Brothers and sisters, do you realize that God has delivered you out of the power of darkness and translated you into the kingdom of God’s love? Do you understand that He has saved you and put you into His own kingdom?
You are no longer your own. You belong to Him. Consecration is a must for all believers.
If you have not presented your body as a living sacrifice, you have not begun to live the Christian life. The spiritual life begins at consecration.
Consecration is not giving yourself to the Lord to do something. Consecration is putting yourself under the authority of your King and letting Him have every right over your life.
Do not be afraid of that. Is it better to put yourself in His hands than to hold yourself in your own hands? What can you do with yourself?
But if you put yourself in His hands, He will transform you. He will put His character into you and make you fit for His kingdom.
When our Lord was on earth, He not only called people to repent; He also called for disciples. After He called for disciples, He began to reveal the nature of His kingdom.
His kingdom is not the kingdom of this world. You remember how He testified before Pilate:
My kingdom is not of this world.
It is a heavenly kingdom. It is a spiritual kingdom. The nature of the kingdom comes from the King Himself.
His kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. His kingdom is what He is.
He wants us to be like Him. He wants to characterize us with His own character.
Some of His disciples said, “This word is hard,” and they left Him. You remember our Lord Jesus said to the twelve, “Would ye also go away?”
Thank God for Simon Peter. He said:
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
Do you have this attitude? Are you thinking that His word is too hard, and do you leave Him and no longer walk with Him? Or are you willing to follow Him wherever He goes?
Do you acknowledge Him as your King, your Sovereign?
When you come to Matthew 11, the Lord Jesus said:
The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.
The word violence seems too violent to us, so we try to make it more gentle. But it is violent—not toward other people, but toward your own self.
If you want to follow the Lord and are not violent toward yourself, you will not be able to follow Him. You will be like the other disciples who said, “This word is too hard,” and ceased to follow Him.
We need to be violent toward ourselves. This does not mean that you try to ill-treat yourself.
In the Middle Ages, people really did violence to themselves. They tried to be holy, and they thought the body was evil. So they believed they had to ill-treat the body. They beat themselves until blood came out, and they slept on beds with iron spikes.
They tried all kinds of violence, thinking that by this they could deliver themselves. Even the Reformer Martin Luther did the same thing. He was a professor, yet he left the professorship and went to an Augustinian monastery.
He fasted and ill-treated himself until he was almost dying. But that is not the meaning.
The violence is directed toward your soul-life, because our soul-life is a fallen life. Our soul-life, our flesh, is an ally of the enemy of God. It does not submit to God, and it does not know God.
It is always resisting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit strives with the flesh, and the flesh strives with the Holy Spirit.
That is the reason why the Lord said:
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Unless you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him, you cannot be His disciple. If you want to save your soul-life, you will lose it; but if you lose it for His sake and for the gospel’s sake, you will save it unto eternity.
That is the Word of God. Brothers and sisters, as we become disciples of our Lord Jesus, we are discipled unto the kingdom. We find that we must be violent toward ourselves. We must deny ourselves.
Peter denied the wrong Person. He should have denied himself. How often we deny the wrong Person. We deny the Lord Jesus when we gratify our flesh.
If we do violence to ourselves, we will see the kingdom—not only positionally, that we are in the kingdom of God, but conditionally, that we are truly sons of the kingdom.
The kingdom is the way to the recovery of the testimony of Jesus.
In the early church, all who believed in the Lord Jesus were disciples of our Lord. It was the disciples who were first called Christians.
If you are merely a believer and not a disciple, the world will not see that you are truly a Christian. You do not have the testimony of Jesus.
But thank God, in the early church they were all disciples, and as disciples they were all Christians. They had the testimony of Jesus.
Gradually, however, the church began to lose her first love. We have already mentioned how the Lord used persecution and tribulation to try to restore them to the testimony of Jesus.
But when we come to the beginning of the fourth century, Constantine the Great adopted Christianity. Christianity suddenly became popular in the world.
The enemy tried to use persecution to kill the church, but on the contrary, God used tribulation to restore the testimony of Jesus. So the enemy changed his strategy. He began to favor Christianity.
The emperor endorsed Christianity, and suddenly Christianity became popular.
At that time, people mistook the kingdom of God for the kingdom of the world.
Because Constantine endorsed Christianity, he encouraged soldiers to be baptized. If they were baptized, they would be rewarded with clothes and silver.
Of course, the soldiers wanted to be baptized. They could receive something and gain the favor of the emperor.
Most people in Christianity were unsaved. How could they serve God? So a special group of people had to be prepared to do the ministry.
Gradually, Christianity became a world empire. They thought they were building the kingdom of God, not knowing that they had fallen into the trick of the enemy.
Justification by faith was lost. People tried to accumulate merit in order to go to heaven. Christianity entered into the Dark Ages.
The kingdom of heaven was completely lost. It became a worldly kingdom.
Thank God, in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other Reformers began to preach justification by faith. They emphasized an open Bible: “Let us return to the Word of God.”
Thus, officially, the recovery of the testimony of Jesus began. But unfortunately, they restored the gospel of grace and forgot the gospel of the kingdom.
The truth of the kingdom was therefore unknown among the Protestants. People said, “You just believe in the Lord Jesus, and you are saved.”
Because of this, divisions arose in theology. Some said, “Once saved, forever saved.” Others said that if you were saved, you could lose your salvation; if you did not behave, you would lose it.
Christianity was divided into two camps, and the controversy continues even today. Do you know why? It is because the gospel of the kingdom of heaven was lost.
When the gospel of the kingdom of heaven was lost, salvation became cheap grace. There was no spiritual strength to press on.
Why should people press on? They say, “After all, we can go to heaven.” If you are loyal to the Lord, if you deny yourself and follow the Lord, you fare the same as those who simply eat and drink after they are saved.
The truth of the kingdom of the heavens was not recovered until the nineteenth century, when God began to raise up some of His servants to preach again the kingdom of heaven.
They began to show us that those who have received the grace of God should not think that receiving grace is all there is. There is something more. God wants us to be sons of His kingdom.
If we today take up the character of the King, then one day we shall reign with Him. How can you reign with Him if you do not have His character?
Kingdom life today will give us kingdom reign in the days to come.
It is true that if you believe in the Lord Jesus, you have eternal life. That is true. It is the gift of God, and the gifts of God are without repentance.
But before eternity comes, there will be a thousand years. This is what Scripture calls the age to come.
We are in this age, and this age is the age of grace. But when this age comes to a close, the coming age—the age to come—will arrive. That is the millennium of which Scripture speaks.
During that millennium, the kingdom of heaven will publicly appear upon this earth. Today, the reality is here, but it is hidden. One day it will appear.
You find in Revelation 11 that one day:
The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ.
Those who are faithful to Him will reign with Him for a thousand years.
Brothers and sisters, because the kingdom truth was lost to the church, Christians today have become so loose. There is no force within them to press on toward the goal.
Why should we do that? Why not have the good of two worlds? Today we enjoy the world; tomorrow we are in heaven. Why be so foolish? Why pay a cost? Why carry the cross?
Brothers and sisters, it is for the testimony of Jesus.
Unless we live in the kingdom of heaven today, we shall have no part in the kingdom when it becomes public upon this earth, even though eternally we are saved.
If today we are not willing to receive the discipline of the Lord, which enables us to grow up, discipline will not make us sons of the kingdom.
One day, when Christ comes, He shall reign over the earth, and those who follow Him shall reign with Him. This is very clear in the Word of God.
Unfortunately, the kingdom of heaven is still largely unknown to God’s people. But we find in Matthew 24:14:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
We are toward the end of this age. Our Lord is coming soon. But one thing is needed: the kingdom of heaven must be preached to all the nations for a witness to the nations.
That is to be a witness of Jesus, the testimony of Jesus.
So, brothers and sisters, we do believe that this is the time for us to wake up. We should see that the kingdom of heaven is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That will prepare us for the coming of the Lord.
How gloriously we sang at the beginning of the meeting, because Christ is coming. But it will not come automatically. God’s timetable is according to His purpose.
We may wonder why the Lord has not yet come. During the first century, people were waiting for the coming of the Lord. Were they mistaken? No.
During the great persecutions of the second and third centuries, people encouraged themselves with the word, “The Lord is coming.” Twenty centuries have passed, and we are now in the twenty-first century, yet the Lord still has not come.
We only know that His coming is very imminent. Why has He not come? It is not because He does not want to come, but because His bride is not ready.
How can His bride be ready? The gospel of the kingdom of heaven is the preparation.
When the gospel of the kingdom of heaven is preached throughout the whole habitable world as a witness to the nations, then the end will come.
So, in a sense, we are all responsible. We cannot just wait here passively. We have to wait actively.
We should hasten His return. Those who have the kingdom life hasten His return.
So may the Lord help us.
Dear Lord, Thy Word has made it clear. Thou art calling us to follow Thee, that we may have the life of the kingdom of heaven, that we may be those who have the testimony of Jesus, and that we may hasten Thy return.
We look to Thy mercy.