Good afternoon, my dear beloved brothers and sisters. I’m waiting for translation. There was no translation.
It’s wonderful to be here once again. For some of us, it’s been many, many years—more than twenty—that the Lord has blessed us to gather here. And I especially want to say greetings to those of you who are here for the first time. You know, it’s a miracle that you’re here.
I understand the registration was finished in twenty-two hours, and I don’t understand how some of you were able to get in under that limit for the first time. But it’s so good.
We bring you greetings from many brothers and sisters in Brazil. Just to briefly report, there are some very wonderful opportunities the Lord is granting to the brothers and sisters in Brazil.
Many, many—I understand thousands of people, for whatever reasons—are deciding to leave their denominational affiliations. And so there are wonderful opportunities for brothers and sisters who have been meeting outside the denomination to try to find a way to serve these ones who are making this decision.
I’m sure, after the times of ministry, you already know that the theme of our time together has to do with this matter of walking worthy of the God Who has called us to His kingdom and glory.
I don’t know, my brothers and sisters, about you, but I am convinced in my own heart that the glory, the honor, the blessedness of God calling us to this has not become as real as it needs to be.
I trust in our fellowship times together that the Lord will be pleased to take the written Word and, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, make it a spoken and living Word to all of our hearts.
I trust that none of us—not one person—will go away from our time together without a deeper, deeper sense in your heart that this matter of the kingdom of God is a most important issue. I trust that you will not just treat it as something that we came here, fellowshipped about, and then went home.
It seems to me that from the first book in the Bible, the first chapter in that first book of Genesis, God begins to lay before us this very important issue of His government being manifested in His universe.
I trust that you have had time to stop and think and ponder that our God could have it no other way. The God that we have come to know in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ could never, ever be satisfied with anything less than a perfect creation and a perfect government being manifested in that creation.
Now, because we have many issues to fellowship about, we cannot go back and try to cover some of the other areas that may seem helpful to us. But I would like to point one thing out to us in Genesis 1: when God created man, you remember He said:
Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.
And then the Lord says something very interesting:
And let them have dominion.
Now, in my reading of that first chapter in Genesis, it seems to me that something very, very tragic happened between verse 1 and verse 2.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
My dear brothers and sisters, I cannot think any other way than that this was a perfect creation that God established. Otherwise, He could not be God. He has to be perfect, and everything He does has to be absolutely perfect.
Yet when you come to verse 2, it says:
And the earth was formless and void, and there was darkness on the surface of the deep.
It is my understanding that this is not the way God created it. Something happened between verse 1 and verse 2 that brought in this darkness, this chaos, into His creation.
And what has become real in my own heart is that, as we stop to think about the whole great creation that we even know about—there is a lot more that we do not know about than we do know about—as far as we have been able to tell from reading the Scriptures, there is only one place in God’s great creation where He has a problem.
He does not seem to have a problem on Mars or Jupiter, or on the moon. But where? On the earth. It was the earth that experienced darkness and void and emptiness and chaos.
And so, as seen from almost the very beginning, it has been in God’s heart to do something about that chaotic condition. Because, being God, He cannot rest until this issue is fully and completely solved and the whole thing has been recovered to where God can be totally satisfied.
Now, when He says in Genesis 1:26, “Let Us make man,” and, “Let Us make them in Our image according to Our likeness, and let them take dominion,” it seems to me that God’s design was for man to have a very special place in recovering this planet Earth, to reestablish His government, His kingdom, His rulership on this planet.
And so we are here during these few days to fellowship together about this matter of us being called to His kingdom and His glory.
Now, I am faced with a tremendous challenge, because I felt, as I tried to get some sense from the Lord as to what He would have me share, that He was saying, “I want you to focus on Matthew 5, 6, and 7.”
Now, brothers and sisters, that is a lot of material. So we are going to seek to be faithful to that. Today, what is in our heart is to focus on Matthew 5, and then, the Lord willing, tomorrow evening on Matthew 6 and 7.
Now, we have many verses that we need to read. We cannot read the entire chapter of Matthew 5, but there are some verses that I feel are important for us to read. Let us begin in the first verse of Matthew 5.
Maybe I should mention before we begin reading this that, as far as I have been able to discern in reading Matthew’s account, at this point there are only four disciples that came with our Lord Jesus up onto this mountainside and sat down and listened to Him teach what we have in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
We have Simon and Andrew and James and John mentioned in Matthew 4. And so it seems like our Lord went up along the side of this mountain, these four men followed Him, they sat down, and we have it recorded for us in Matthew 5:1:
When Jesus saw the crowds,
He went up onto the mountain;
and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.
And He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Let us go to Matthew 5:11:
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you
and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Matthew 5:13:
You are the salt of the earth.
Matthew 5:14:
You are the light of the world.
Matthew 5:17:
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets;
I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
Matthew 5:20:
For I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:21:
You have heard that the ancients were told,
You shall not commit murder,
and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.
But I say to you—
Matthew 5:27:
You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say unto you—
Matthew 5:31:
It was said, Whoever sends his wife away,
let him give her a certificate of divorce.
But I say to you—
Matthew 5:33:
Again, you have heard that the ancients were told,
You shall not make false vows,
but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.
But I say to you—
Matthew 5:38:
You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say unto you—
Matthew 5:43:
You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say unto you—
And then, finally, Matthew 5:48:
Therefore you are to be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Now, I trust you will seek to understand why we were not able to read the entire chapter. But what is in my heart, my dear brothers and sisters, is that somehow our fellowship together in these three chapters will do something in the depths of your heart that will demand that you go home and spend more time reading and meditating and contemplating and seeking to obey what our Lord Jesus has to say in these three chapters.
Our dear brother Stephen, this morning, shared with us something about the nature of God’s kingdom, and I want to focus for a few moments on that this afternoon.
It seems to me, in these three chapters that we have recorded here in Matthew’s Gospel, that in the beginning our Lord focuses attention on what we might call the character of the kingdom, the nature of the kingdom. And then, in the last two chapters, He focuses on how we are to live in the kingdom of God—that is, our conduct as citizens of this kingdom.
Now, this kingdom, as we have heard, is a heavenly kingdom. It is a kingdom that originated in God Himself.
If I can put it this way, it seems to me this is the same kingdom that God Himself lives according to. In other words, this is the way God lives His life. This is the way He wants things done, and this is what He wants to have manifested in the creation which He has created.
So it is something that originated in the depths of God’s heart. I do not think it is a reaction to the situation that we find in Genesis 1. I think it is what God had designed from the very beginning.
And so this kingdom is something that comes out of Who He is. I trust that you have spent some time thinking and meditating about this matter of God manifesting Who He is through the universe that He has made, and also manifesting Himself through those whom He has created in His own image.
So, brothers and sisters, this kingdom is a kingdom that has its origin in God Himself. It is a heavenly kingdom.
Now, I do not know how is the best way to try to share this, but it seems to me, in some ways, that the kingdom of heaven is a subdivision of the kingdom of God. It is a way for God to come and set up His way of ruling from heaven as His throne.
Because the Scriptures tell us:
Heaven is His throne, and the earth is His footstool.
So He apparently has decided that He is going to rule from His position in the heavenlies, manifest His government from there, and therefore the outcome will be that His government, His kingdom, His rulership, will be manifested on this planet Earth.
Now, the second thing that I think we need to point out is that this kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. It cannot be seen with physical eyes.
Now, it is true that we can see some other manifestations with our physical eyes, but it is a spiritual kingdom. That does not make it any less real.
Now, this is a problem we have as human beings. We live in a world where we are surrounded by material things. We come to the false conclusion that the material things are the real, and the spiritual is not the real. But that is not true. It is just the opposite. The spiritual is the real.
We do not have God, as we find Him in the beginning of the Scriptures, manifesting Himself in some physical way. Now, for a special purpose, God the Son did become a human being. He took on flesh and blood.
But we, brothers and sisters, can keep ourselves from going down the wrong road and coming to the wrong conclusions if we start off with this understanding that God is Spirit. He is Spirit. He is a Spirit Being.
And so, do not try to put a face on Him. Do not try to judge Him in light of that which is material. And so, when it comes to His kingdom, it is a spiritual kingdom. And being spiritual, it means it does not have the limitations that material things have.
God’s kingdom can be a total reality in the heavenly dimension where He has set up His throne, but it can also be a total reality here on this earth. The same kingdom can be manifested here as is being manifested in the heavenly dimension.
Did our Lord Jesus not teach us to pray? Maybe the Lord will have us fellowship about that tomorrow. But did He not teach us to pray:
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done—where?
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Now, how is that possible? Well, it has to be something spiritual that can transcend, that can go beyond, the material and the things that we are able to see with our eyes.
So it is a spiritual kingdom. It is an invisible kingdom. And the wonderful thing about this spiritual and invisible kingdom is that not only can it come to this planet, but, hallelujah, brothers and sisters, where else can it come to? It can come and take up residence in our hearts. It can be a reality there.
And this is what it really means for us to know our Lord Jesus as the full Savior. We not only need to be saved from the sins we have committed; we need to be saved and delivered from the person who committed those sins.
And we need to be freed from the influences that brought us to the place where we committed these kinds of sins. So, when the kingdom of God floods into our hearts and becomes something of a reality, and grows and grows and grows, then more of God’s will is done.
And that means there is less manifestation of those things that violate the will of God. We can also say it is an eternal kingdom. It is something inside, because it is invisible and it is spiritual.
Now, another dimension of this kingdom—and this, to me, is something we need to stop and give a whole lot of thought to—is that it is a righteous kingdom.
That is, in God’s kingdom, everything that is done is perfectly righteous. He has a standard. The standard is Himself. He does not ask counsel from anybody else as to what is right and what is not right. He makes that decision out of Himself.
And since He makes this decision, the way He wants to govern His universe, and everything in it, and everyone in it, is by His righteous standard. And so it is a righteous kingdom.
As our brother was sharing this morning, I was reminded of my own little definition of the kingdom of God: it is the sovereign reign of a righteous God.
Very simple. Not complicated. It is God sovereignly reigning—that is, He is doing what pleases Him. But it is done in righteousness, perfect righteousness.
So we are going to notice here in a few moments, when we get to some of these later verses in Matthew 5, that the righteousness our God wants to develop into our lives and enable us to live is a totally different kind of righteousness than we as human beings develop. But God’s kingdom is a righteous kingdom.
Now, I do not know how you feel about that. Maybe that upsets you. Why cannot God be more give-and-take? Why cannot He just allow everybody to do what they want to do?
Well, I do not know what your conclusion would be, but it would seem to me we would have a major mess on our hands. We would have chaos.
But God Himself decides what His kingdom is going to manifest, and He wants it to manifest His own righteousness.
So, to me, a simple definition is: the sovereign God, righteously ruling over His universe. Or, that righteous God ruling in our hearts, or in our homes, or in our assemblies, or in a whole nation.
And we know—oh, hallelujah, brothers and sisters—eventually this whole planet Earth is going to be under that righteous rule of God.
Now, it is taking a lot longer than some of us would like for it to take, but that is not our decision. No one asked us about it. This is left to Him.
Not only is He going to bring this about, but He is going to bring it about in a way that is totally in line with Himself, with His own character. And so we need to be very, very careful.
He is the only One in the position to decide when things are the way He wants them to be—not somebody sitting in an office telling us that someday here in October the Lord is going to come back. Is that happening again this year, this month? Is that what they said? This brother up in New Jersey?
He is not in that position. We are number-one fools. This has been going on for hundreds of years. Why do we not learn from other people’s stupidities? I am not going to answer that. Maybe we have the same problem.
But, brothers and sisters, our God has a goal, and it is a goal of Him sovereignly, righteously, completely ruling over everything in His universe.
Now, I do not know what that does to you, but it brings the greatest sense of joy inside of me.
I live in a country, in Brazil, where you not only need to build walls around your houses; you have to put electric fences on top of the walls to keep the thieves out.
Now, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah! There will be no electric fences when God’s kingdom is fully established on this planet. Amen.
Is this what you want? See, this gets down to where we are talking about what is our part in this. Certainly, God is the only One who can do it, but, brothers and sisters, He has chosen to use the likes of us to take dominion.
First of all, let this kingdom become a reality in our own lives. Let it be extended to our family relationships. Then let it be manifested among us as God’s redeemed people.
Brothers and sisters, think about it. Here on the earth today, where should we see something of a full manifestation of the kingdom of God? Where should our Lord Jesus be ruling and reigning supremely? Where? In His church.
Is that happening? It is not happening. And we need to take the responsibility for it—for our part of it.
And sometimes maybe we need to be like Nehemiah, and accept the responsibility for decisions that have been made in the past too, and repent of them, so that the Lord Jesus can have His rightful place.
Think about it, oh dear brothers and sisters. We were rebels. We were His enemies. Somehow, by His mercy, He was able to go beyond that and penetrate our dark, hard hearts with the truth of His great love for us.
Somehow it found its way in there. And His heart’s desire—the reason why He took that initial step—was so that eventually this matter of Him being King, of being Lord, would be a fuller reality in our lives.
And what about among us as assemblies of the Lord’s people? I have to be careful here, because I think it is the number-one issue facing us as God’s people: What does it really mean for Jesus to be the Head of His assembly?
Because for Him to be Head means He has to be sovereign. He does not ask for counsel. These are decisions that issue forth out of Himself.
Sorry, my dear brothers and sisters, if this sounds too strong. I do not find this being manifested very many places on the face of this earth, where Jesus—the Lord Jesus Christ, the One Whom God Himself has appointed to be Head over all things to the church—is truly consulted.
How much time do we spend consulting Him, inquiring of Him as to what He wants to do and how He wants it done? No, we just assume that we get people together and we say, “Okay, that sounds pretty good to me.” But we never stop to consult our blessed Head.
Now, brothers and sisters, this to me is one clear explanation as to why we have the great mess we have today among us as the churches. In Brazil alone, where I live, there are more than three thousand denominations. Ten years ago there were three thousand. Maybe there are four thousand ten years later.
Every division that we have did not originate with our living Head. So it is something we need to take an honest look at. If we are really genuinely concerned about this matter of the kingdom of God, then it is time to get to know the King in our corporate life and stop making decisions just because it is the way we have always done it.
I hope you have heard this story about a man and his wife. One day they were in the kitchen, and she was preparing dinner. At some point, she had this big, beautiful roast beef. She took it and cut it in half, put the two pieces in a pan, and put it in the oven.
And the husband said, “Hmm, I wonder why she cut it in half.” So he said, “I am going to ask her.” He asked her, “My love, why did you cut the roast in half?”
“I do not know. My mother did.”
And so he said, “Well, I am going to call your mother and find out. Why did she cut the roast in half?” So he called her. You know what she said? “I did not have a pan big enough for the roast. I had to cut it in half.”
So, brothers and sisters, this is what we often do. We do not go back to the Lord, but we just make a decision: “This is what we have always done.”
May God deliver us. May the truth of the kingdom begin in our own hearts and extend into our life together as the Lord’s people.
So this kingdom is a righteous kingdom. Now, I have already said this in another way, but the kingdom of God manifests Who the King is. What kind of a King He is.
See, He never functions one way different from Who He is. Whatever He does, He does out of the reality of Who He is. So, when the kingdom of God is genuinely and truly being manifested, it means the King is free to express Himself in that situation.
So when we talk about the kingdom, when we find ourselves reading these three chapters—Matthew 5, 6, and 7—what we have is a revelation, a manifestation, of the King. He is talking about Himself, and our relationship to Him, and what happens when people have the right relationship with Him.
Now, let us go back for just a second and ask ourselves about this matter of government. You know, it was mentioned previously that human beings have discovered different ways to govern themselves: democracy, a republic, a monarchy, an oligarchy.
I am not going to take time to try to explain all of these. It just means many people, a few people, in the position of ruling. But there is God’s idea. His design is that the kingdom of God be a theocracy and a Christocracy.
Now, what do we mean by that? It means that God Himself is ruling over what is happening. And so He is the King.
You remember when God made covenant relationship with the children of Israel. His desire was to be their King. But they came to a point in which they looked around at all their Gentile neighbors, and what did they see? They had kings.
So what did they say? “We want a king. We want a king. We want a king.” So the Lord told Samuel, “Okay, give in to them and give them a king.” But let us be clear: it was never God’s design. He wanted to be their King.
Today, as new-covenant people, God has decided Who the King is. It is His own Son. He has placed Him in that position to be the sovereign ruler over everything that happens.
But for now, He has been made Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all. And He is using the church as a way of extending the kingdom, influencing the kingdom around us.
We also discover that there is a domain, a kingdom of darkness, which our brother mentioned this morning. And the king over this is none other than God’s arch-enemy, Satan.
And when you and I did not know our Lord Jesus, we were living in that kingdom. Oh, I know some people are unwilling to face that, but that was reality. He was your king.
Now, you may not have had a direct relationship with him, but through his emissaries your life was being influenced by him. And so you were living in the kingdom of darkness.
But I want to mention one other thing this afternoon, and I hope you will be very patient with me. In the last few years, I have been trying to get clear in my own heart and understanding about the Person and work of the Holy Spirit.
And so we have God as One Who is the King in the theocracy. His Son is the One Who is the King in the new covenant. But the third Member of the Godhead has a very vital part to play in this whole matter of establishing the kingdom of God.
Now, our Lord Jesus is the King. No question, okay? After He came here and obeyed His Father totally—one hundred percent—He never disobeyed His Father in one little, small thing.
He was obedient unto death. Therefore, God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
God has made Him that King. And He is seated there at His Father’s right hand, at the right hand of Majesty. And even now, for two thousand years—oh, brothers and sisters, we need to meditate on this—for two thousand years, there has been a human being seated at the right hand of Majesty, ruling sovereignly over the universe that God has created.
No hallelujahs? Shame on you. Hallelujah! I will say it for you: hallelujah! It is a wonderful, wonderful thing—a great victory. A man, a human being—unique, no question—is now seated there.
Remember back in Genesis 1, “Let them have dominion”? Hallelujah! A man has taken dominion. He has taken rulership over all that God has created.
He is even sovereign, as we heard this morning. He is even sovereign over your life. Now, not to the degree He wants to be, but He is sovereign over everybody’s life.
Even when you sin, as our brother said, it does not change the fact that He is sovereign. You understand what I am saying? Oh, brothers and sisters, He sovereignly allows you to sin without zapping you with some lightning or judging you in some other way. This is a sovereign choice that He makes.
But seated there is our reigning, ruling Lord Jesus Christ as God’s anointed King. Now, He is there, and here we are in Harvey Cedars, Long Beach, New Jersey, USA. How does that kingdom get from there to here? How does it get from there to my heart and your heart? How?
FedEx? I do not think so. Someone much more wonderful.
His name, originally, that our Lord Jesus used, is the word Parakletos. So I have come up with a new word. You do not have to put it down in your notes, but it is a “Paracletocracy”: the rulership, the government, of the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, we know too little about Him, and we are not able to hear His voice as clearly as we need to. We do not appreciate Him. He has been insulted in many, many ways among us as God’s people.
Some of us are afraid of Him because of the things that we have heard and seen happening among some of God’s dear children. And we need to let the blessed Holy Spirit take the truth of this Word and purge our thinking about Him and get it back to where it ought to be, like it was in the book of Acts.
Will there be some unusual things happen? Probably, knowing human beings. No guarantee that you will not be one of those who does some unusual things.
But, brothers and sisters, I do not see that we have an option. What are we going to do? How is our Lord Jesus going to manifest the reality of His being King here in our hearts, in our lives, in our homes, in our assemblies, in our communities, if the blessed Holy Spirit has not been sent to make it a reality?
So it would seem to me that we need to get to know Him, maybe in a way that we have never known Him before.
You remember, our Lord Jesus said in John 14:
I will send you allon Parakleton, another Helper, just like Me.
And you shall know Him. Why? Because He is with you, and He is in you.
Now, do you not think it is a sad situation if Someone is living in our lives and we have not come to know Him in a full way, especially when He has been sent to be the Helper?
Let me ask—I know I have asked this question before for some of you—but do you need any help? Do you need any help at all? I mean, have you got it all worked out on your own? Are you able to pull it off day in and day out without making any mistakes, without violating the will of God? Is that real for you?
No, you need a Helper. You are like the rest of us. Well, I am here to report to you this afternoon: hallelujah! The Father and the Son have gotten together, and They have sent us the best Helper possible for us to have anywhere.
It is none other than God Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit. He is a Person. He is a real Person. He is a living Person. He is the divine Person. And He has been sent here on a mission.
And without Him, we cannot know anything or experience what our Lord Jesus died on that cross to accomplish. I want to appeal to us: let us take a good, honest look at the way we think about Him.
I know there are a lot of crazy things going on in this world. But, my dear brothers and sisters, this should not cause us to take the stand that apparently some of God’s people have taken.
And so, the way we are going to know the reality of the kingdom of God in our lives and these other places is for us to know the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit of God. He is sovereign. He is the Lord. He represents the sovereignty, the righteousness, of the Father and the Son.
It seems to me we need to get to know Him as much as is possible. Now, I know there are some people who say, “Well, we need to be careful.” I agree. But I do not think we need to be foolish and turn our backs on the whole experience because there have been some foolish things that have been done.
I know there are dangers inherent in that. But, brothers and sisters, this was a decision made by the Father and the Son. Apparently, They are willing to take the risk. Huh?
If They are willing to take the risk, I think we should be willing to take the risk of knowing experientially what the Bible teaches us about being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Do not get all tied up in the language and all that, although I think that is important. But say to the Father, and say to the Son, say to the Lord Jesus as the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit, “I want whatever it is that You sent on the day of Pentecost. I want to know it as fully as I can. I want to be filled with Him.”
So that I can know the reality of the kingdom—not just know it. But how did you get into the kingdom in the first place? How did you get in? Our brother told us this morning. How did it happen?
It was the work of the Holy Spirit. You were born of the Spirit. He worked in you, and He has been sent here on a mission. He is commissioned to come here and take every one of us, regardless of who we are, regardless of our background, form us into the image of Christ, and teach us how to daily live according to the will of God—to live in the kingdom.
And He is prepared to take and help us with everything we need. There is not one thing missing that we need in order to live every day fully in the kingdom of God.
Now, fully for all of us—we are all at different levels. He does not expect the same thing out of each one of us, but He does expect every one of us to live up to the measure that we have already received. To whatever degree He has worked in our lives, God expects us to live in that reality.
And so I do not hesitate for one second to say to you, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the hour when you and I need to get great clarity about the Person and work of the Holy Spirit and what our responsibility is to Him.
We can talk here until we are blue in the face, but if we do not know the reality of this, it is only teaching, it is only doctrine, it is only some biblical information.
But if we want to know—please forgive me, but let me ask you—if you had been a newspaper reporter, and you were in the city of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2, and you went around as a reporter and began asking all of those people who were doing these crazy things, like speaking in a language they had never learned, and you said to them, “What is going on here today?” how many of them would have said, “The kingdom of God is being manifested”?
Probably they did not know. They just simply obeyed their Lord. They went back to Jerusalem, and they waited until the promise of the Father was given. And when He was given, their lives were filled, and they were transformed.
Is there any question there is a difference in Peter before and after Pentecost? Any question? Not in my mind there is not. He is a transformed man.
The same one who cursed and said, “I never knew that man,” when he stood before that council of people—now he stands before them and says, “You are the ones who were responsible for Him being crucified.”
No change? Oh, brothers and sisters, a tremendous change. How do we explain the change? Peter went to seminary—that helped, huh? Sorry, I do not think that would do it.
No, brothers and sisters. It simply says:
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
And they began to do things that manifested the kingdom of God in such a way that it had never been manifested before.
When they began to speak in other languages they had not learned, what was the result? Just look at the result, my brothers and sisters. What happened when Peter finished his sermon? Three thousand people flooded into the kingdom of God in one day. Hallelujah!
This is the difference it makes. And so, if we think for a moment that we are going to enter into a fuller dimension of God’s kingdom and not give serious attention to the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, I think we are foolish.
So we need to discover, in a very living way, how He is to fully fulfill His ministry in our lives, in our homes, and in our assemblies.
In Matthew 5, when our Lord Jesus began to teach these four men, He began in a very unusual way, in my estimation. He sat down and gave what we call Beatitudes.
Nine of them, but eight of them seem to be specifically related to the matter of the kingdom of God.
Now, I have to say these things quickly because I have spent too much time talking about other things, okay? But it seems to me that the first four of these Beatitudes are:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.
Now, it seems to me, brothers and sisters, as I have thought and meditated about this, that these four qualities are something that is inside.
That is, to be poor in spirit means it is something, a reality, inside. To mourn is primarily something that happens inside of us. To be meek and teachable, gentle, is something that we are inside. Now, it has its manifestation, but it originates inside.
And the same way about being hungry and thirsty. My discovery is this happens inside of me. Something inside of me gets hungry and thirsty.
So it seems that our Lord Jesus took this opportunity to put the focus where it needed to be. Brothers and sisters, the only way that you and I can experience, enter in, and live in the reality of the kingdom of God is for something to be changed inside of us.
We are the wrong kind of people to live in the kingdom. We are His enemies. By nature, we are rebels, doing our own thing.
And just because God forgives us does not mean that that changed anything at all. Did you notice that after you were forgiven, you did not stop sinning? Why? Why, my brothers and sisters?
God is so merciful to forgive you. Why did you not just say, “Okay, as of today, I am making a resolution”? Maybe you did make a resolution, but you found out it did not work. Why?
Because we sin because we are sinners. We did not become sinners by sinning. And so, in order for us to live in this righteous kingdom, we have to be changed inside. We have to become righteous.
In order for us to be compatible, and to enjoy and live in the reality of this, we have to be changed. So the Lord Jesus says, “You need to be poor.”
I hope some of you who live in New York will forgive me for this, but what I understand our Lord Jesus is saying is that this is learning how to live every day at ground zero, at the bottom, totally dependent on Him.
You know, this is the hardest thing in the world to do, because we think that after a few years of walking with the Lord, we do not need to start at ground zero. We can start at another level.
But, brothers and sisters, the reality is, if you read Philippians 2, what did our Lord Jesus do? Although He was equal with God, He did not hold on to His equality with God, but He emptied Himself of His rights to make His own decisions. That is my interpretation.
And He became a bondservant. And as a bondservant, He became obedient unto death, even death on the cross.
He never did anything by His own initiative. He never initiated anything. He never performed a miracle until He saw His Father performing it. He never even spoke one word unless He heard His Father speaking it.
This is what I think our Lord meant by being poor in spirit: being totally, one hundred percent dependent on God.
But when our old flesh hears that, we just do not like it at all. But this is reality.
You know, the Lord had to deal with our brother Paul about this issue. You can read about it in Romans 7. If there was ever a man who, after he was forgiven, was qualified to live a life pleasing to God by himself, it was this man.
But in Romans 7, what did he discover?
I know, I know that in me, in my flesh, there is no good thing.
And I did not hear one amen out of any of you. I will say it for you: amen, for you. Because it is true. It is the Word of God.
There is not one thing you can do out of your flesh, out of who you are in Adam, that will bring pleasure to God, that enables you to live in the kingdom of God.
You may be the best human being that was ever born on the earth according to man’s standard, but you are totally, totally, totally disqualified to live in the kingdom of God. Why? Because of who you are on the inside. You are the wrong person.
It is like trying to ask a fish to live in the air. We are just not built that way.
Now, God originally created us with that potential, with that possibility. Had Adam eaten of the tree of life, it would have been a new life.
Oh, brothers and sisters, there would have been God’s own divine life—the same life that enables Him to live according to the standard of righteousness. That same life would have been given to Adam and his descendants.
Well, hallelujah, my brothers and sisters, when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you know what happens? Do you know what happens? We receive that life.
The same life that enabled our Lord Jesus to live, that life that now qualifies Him to sit there on that throne, has now been given to you and me as an absolute free gift.
But unfortunately, it seems to me many of us have not discovered it yet. It is the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of life, and He has come to bring this life.
And our Lord Jesus said:
I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.
It is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of life, Who imparts this to us.
So, brothers and sisters, being poor in spirit—one translation says, “being poor in pride”—totally poverty-stricken with regard to pride.
Now, if you are honest and you are not totally blind, you will see that you are not poor in pride. We are very rich in pride.
But to come to that place where we are—We mentioned earlier about the different kinds of kingdoms that there are in this world. There is one I did not mention that I want to mention now. It is the kingdom of self.
You know who the king is there? You know who the king is? You.
You built your own little kingdom. You put yourself on that throne. Nobody else put you there. And you made yourself king.
And in order for Jesus to really be Lord of our lives, that king has to be deposed on a regular, daily, hourly basis. He has to be deposed. You have to deny that king the right to rule in your life.
I cannot do that for you. You cannot do that for me. We can encourage each other, but when it comes right down to it, only I and only you can make that decision.
But when self is king, it means that Jesus cannot be King—not practically—and it means that the kingdom of God is not a reality in our lives.
So our Lord Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn,” who take this matter of sin and disobedience very seriously.
Oh, my dear, dear brothers and sisters, just because God’s mercy is so wonderful, and He forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives and forgives in a way that He never remembers again, this does not give us license to go on sinning.
We need to hate it with a passion. We need to mourn when we sin, when we disobey, when we do not live in the reality of the righteousness of the kingdom of God.
Now, you know, my dear brothers and sisters, I hope you know I am not talking about something that we pull off in our own energy and strength. But why has the Holy Spirit been sent here to live in us, and to be with us, and to lead us and guide us and impart strength to us? Why?
Because He wants us to learn how to live a different kind of life—to be led by the Spirit.
When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, it means that He has the freedom to lead us. We walk according to the Spirit. We pray in the Spirit. We sing in the Spirit. We worship in the Spirit. Everything is a manifestation of the Spirit of God.
So, brothers and sisters, I can tell you from what little bit of experience I have had: He hates sin in every form that it gets manifested.
And if we will learn to be sensitized by Him, we will come to the same place where sin is an enemy that we declare war on. And it gives the Holy Spirit the freedom to come invading our lives and giving us that measure of the life of Christ that enables us to overcome the temptations.
It does not mean that temptations do not come. They come. But hallelujah, we do not have to be victimized by them anymore. We were before.
But that person who was victimized has been put to death, has been co-crucified with the Lord Jesus Christ. And if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live.
And so we need to learn—this is another thing we need to learn about the ministry of the Holy Spirit—to be gentle, teachable.
Brothers and sisters, I confess my sin to you. I have been living in Brazil for ten years, and I do not know hardly any Portuguese. You know why?
Because I am a stubborn person who will not humble himself and learn how to discipline himself in learning this new language.
Oh, I think I have twelve hundred and three excuses. If you need any, I can help you with the excuses as to why I have not learned Portuguese. And some of them are legitimate. I mean, there are real reasons why. But there are no real reasons. They are only excuses.
Well, brothers and sisters, if we are going to learn how to live in the reality of the kingdom, we have to be learners. We have to be disciples, disciples of the kingdom, learning how to live.
Brother, this is like going into a dimension that is totally foreign to anything we have ever experienced before. Something that we do not have naturally has to be imparted to us.
The same way when astronauts go up into space, they cannot just go up there dressed in the same clothes they wear every day down here. There have to be some adjustments made. The same way with us, and we have to learn.
Brothers and sisters, as far as I have been able to discover, there is no graduation from discipleship. To the last day that we are on the face of this earth, walking here, there will be lessons we need to learn about living in the kingdom of God.
Hungry and thirsty. This explains a lot of things. We are not desperate. It does not mean enough to us.
We are satisfied just to have an hors d’oeuvre, and this somehow takes away the hunger. And just a little sip of water is enough to remove the thirst temporarily.
But there is a wonderful, wonderful verse in John 7:38. The Lord Jesus said:
If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to Me and drink.
As the Scripture has said,
out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.
And what our Lord is saying is, if you are thirsty, and you stay thirsty, and you keep coming, and you keep drinking, miracles will happen. Things will happen in your life that can be explained in no other way than that the Holy Spirit is finding a way to work in your life.
So those are the first four. As far as I can see, these relate to what our Lord Jesus says later in this chapter:
You are the salt of the earth.
These four are the salt—who you are internally. Do you know, my dear, dear brother and sister, God is more concerned about who you are than what you do? You know that?
The world has sold us a bill of goods. But our Lord says, “Listen, this is where the important thing is. If you will not let Me change who you are, then the consequence is: you do not get to be a part of the kingdom.”
And then He talks about four things. He talks about being merciful, about being pure in heart, about being peacemakers, and about being persecuted.
To me, it seems that these are the ways that this character that is inside of us gets manifested. Now, please remember, this is none other than God’s own character. It is not something that God has created and given to you. God is giving Himself to you.
So that the same character that we see in our Lord Jesus is now being formed and developed in us. I trust that you felt in your heart to sing this prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, grow in me.
Not just, “Give me something,” but, “Grow in me. Make me this kind of a person.”
And what will happen is we will see mercy. The same way God was merciful to us, it should be a natural, spontaneous response from us that we are merciful in our relationship with all kinds of human beings.
Was He not merciful to you? Then what right do we have to deny others that same measure of mercy that they may need? It does not make any difference who they are or what they have done.
The life of God in us, if we are responding to it, will cause us to respond in mercy.
Pure in heart. My understanding of what our Lord is talking about is the same thing that David said in Psalm 27:
One thing have I desired of the Lord.
And what Paul says in Philippians 3:
One thing I do.
And what the Lord Jesus said to Martha when she came and complained that Mary was not helping her. The Lord Jesus said, “You are busy about many things, but Martha, one thing is needed.”
To have a heart to discern that one thing. We will see it later when we get over to Matthew 6:33:
Seek first.
Put it on the top of your list. Make number one in your life what? The kingdom of God and His righteousness. And the benefits are unbelievable—better than you will ever find in any Wall Street firm.
Nobody else can make this promise. Sorry, my brothers and sisters, if this offends you, but hallelujah: He will take care of every need you have.
Some of us can testify of that today. He is a faithful, merciful, generous-beyond-belief heavenly Father.
What does He require of us? By the help of the Holy Spirit, to be a seeker after God’s will in our lives, after God’s government being a reality, and righteousness being manifested in our lives.
If this is a priority, if this is the one thing we want, we seek after it. Then God will see that you have what you need for your daily life.
Blessed are those who are persecuted. Now, the reason we are persecuted is because His life is in us, His character is being manifested through us—not because of who we are, not because of some of the foolish things we do and say as Christians.
Sometimes we bring the persecution on ourselves, not because we are righteous, but because we are foolish and do and say foolish things.
But the Lord Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
So this seems to me to refer to being light. The salt has to do with the first four; the light has to do with the last four.
My time is gone. I am only halfway through at the most—I mean, at the least.
But in the remainder of Matthew 5, we read where the Lord Jesus said:
Unless your righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of God.
This ought to awaken something inside of us, to where we have a deep, deep desire and yearning for this righteousness to be something that is manifested in our lives.
And then our Lord Jesus goes through and He mentions five things that have been said in the past: “You shall not commit murder, but I say unto you.” “You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you.” “You shall give a writ of divorcement, but I say unto you.” “You shall not make false vows, but I say unto you.”
And what is the other one? I have forgotten it. Oh, “You have heard, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you.”
You know what I think He is trying to do? Help us get clear and raise our level of righteousness to God’s level.
What He is wanting us to do is to learn to live life according to the righteousness that God manifests. And that is now possible, my dear brothers and sisters, because the Righteous One has come to take up residence in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
He brought Christ to live in us. It is now possible for us to allow Him to raise His standard up, because we have inside of us—hallelujah, my sister—we have Someone living inside of us Who can rise to this occasion and live this kind of a righteous life.
It does not mean you are going to bat a thousand. It does not mean you are not going to make mistakes. But many of our mistakes, hallelujah, lead us to learn valuable lessons.
Many times, we have to learn the wrong way before we are prepared to learn the right way. But we should not be surprised at ourselves. Huh?
That is why the Lord Jesus said you have to become like a little child to enter the kingdom. You have to become that way and stay that way, so you are always in a learning mode. You are always willing, open, to learn and learn from your mistakes.
And remember that last verse our Lord Jesus said:
Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.
You think maybe somebody wrote that in there? He did not really say that?
No, brothers and sisters. I do not know what your response is, but you know my response to that verse is, “Hallelujah!” Why?
Because we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. What word would you use to describe Him? Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
And hallelujah, God has predestined us, and He is in the business of taking us to the place where we are conformed to the image of His Son. And with this work being done in us, we now can live in a fuller way in the reality of this kingdom.
So I trust that something got stirred in your heart that will cause you to go back—maybe after the time we have here together—but go back and spend time in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
Let the Holy Spirit open it up to you and make it real to you, and let it be what the Lord intended for it to be. It is not just a teaching.
We call it the Sermon on the Mount, but that is a misnomer. It was a teaching on a hill, not a sermon on a mount. It was a teaching the Lord Jesus gave so that these disciples would learn the reality of the kingdom and how to live in it.
Is this what you want, my dear brother and sister? Is this a desire of your heart? Did you come here just to listen to messages on the kingdom, or did you come here because you want to know more about this kingdom and you want to enter into it?
I hope it is the latter. And I promise you, if you will take these three chapters—not on the basis of my word, but what does the Lord Jesus say at the end of Matthew 7?
He who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice will do what?
He is like a man who built his house.
He dug deep and built his house on a stone, on a rock.
And the floods came—the tsunami, even like the one in Japan. I do not know if you have seen pictures of that. But even that tsunami—oh, hallelujah, brothers and sisters—not even that tsunami can destroy that house that is built by simply hearing and obeying the words we find in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
Do not let somebody tell you, “This is for the millennial age. It is not for now. It is too high. The ideal is great, but it is not practical.” It is not true.
True, in terms of trying to pull it off on your own. But if you know there is Someone living inside of you Who has already done it, Who has already lived it, and now He has come to live it out in you—if this is becoming more and more real to you—then what you will have, just by learning to obey, you will be experiencing in a fuller way: living in the reality of the kingdom.
Well, two or three of you, brothers and sisters, please pray.