Advancing The Kingdom Of God
I am using the word "grace" as an acronym in this teaching to identify five important values for the church. The "G" stands for "God's Presence" and our pursuit of Him. We talked about that in lessons 1 to 4. The "R" stands for "Restoration of Souls," and we talked about that in lessons 5 to 8. Now we are on to the "A." And that stands for "Advancing God's Kingdom."
God is in the business of bringing His kingdom on earth. We know this because in the Lord's Prayer that He gave to His disciples He basically said this, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
We do not have to debate whether we should be calling on God to advance His kingdom on earth. That is not a matter of debate. That is a sure thing. It is right there in the Word. He asks us to pray this because we are supposed to be participating in His kingdom here on this earth.
Oftentimes, people think the main objective is simply to see how big they can build their church. If you hang out with pastors at all, that is all they think about. They think that if a lot of people come on Sunday mornings, the offerings are up, and programs are expanding, they think their church is a success. The community can be going to hell, righteousness not pervading the land. But if everyone is going good in the house, they feel like they are a success. But that is not how God defines "success." Success is not in building the local house, but in building the kingdom of God.
On a practical side, we really do need to build the house a bit in order to equip the people to penetrate the systems of this world. But the reason we give any attention to building the house should be simply to help facilitate the equipping of people so we can penetrate these kingdoms and these systems in the world. That is the church's job and that is why we should focus upon that.
It is not that I am against church growth. That is okay and I am all for that. However, it has to be in relationship to advancing His kingdom. Church growth that comes solely from attracting those who already Christians and who already worship somewhere else to come worship and tithe at your church is not a good thing. That is not advancing God's kingdom at all; it is merely relocating existing resources. But church growth that comes from making new converts is an excellent thing. In other words, are the fruits of the kingdom penetrating the kingdom and our culture around us? That is the question. The reason the Church is here is to change our culture to better line up with the Kingdom of God. We are not here to just sit around and wait for the rapture. Many times, that is what the church thinks. They think "I'm just going to bide my time. I am going to crawl into my hole and say, 'Lord, protect and keep me safe until You come.'" But we need to be actively expanding God's kingdom.
Rev. 11:15 says, "Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!'"
That passage shows us what God is really doing on planet earth; He is bringing all the kingdoms of God underneath the feet of Jesus. Ultimately, when Jesus comes again everything will be brought underneath His feet. Therefore, the kingdom is about the reign of God, the rule of God. It is talking about the sphere in which God rules. It is really talking about the place of jurisdiction.
Our world is made up of all kinds of different kingdoms. We can call these systems, or kingdoms. They are places where we as a church are called to penetrate. We need to have a WD-40 anointing. You know, WD-40 is that which penetrates. It lubricates. It breaks loose what which has been frozen. God has called His church to walk in a WD-40 anointing to penetrate the systems of this world and to bring righteousness into these systems. God has called us to change the culture, to bring everything into cooperation with the Lord Jesus, to bring everything under the feet of Jesus.
Let me give you some illustrations of this. John Calvin was one of the reformers, part of the reformation with Martin Luther. He did something very unique in Geneva, Switzerland. He took the principles he learned from Luther from the reformation and applied these into the financial industry, into the baking industry in Switzerland. He began to regulate interest rates, allowing for people who could not normally afford to be able to start businesses or build a house. In other words, our modern financial banking system has its roots in the reformation. How we do business financially, has its roots with God. That's where it kind of started.
Educational systems In the USA? Where did they begin? It began with the church. Why did it begin? Because the church wanted people to be able to read the Bible. You see, there was no emphasis; nations were not having schools to equip everyone to read; only the few got to read. All of a sudden, the church realized that everybody needed to read the Bible. They wanted people literate so that people could read the Bible. Consequently, they started kindergartens and grade-schools. They began these schools in order to educate people so that they could read the Word of God. Ministers started the major universities in the United States, in the very beginning, almost all of these. Some of the most prestigious universities in the United States were started by ministers, and they were started for the purpose of training ministers. The first president of Princeton was Jonathan Edwards, who was a revivalist. These universities began in order to equip and to train ministers to propagate the good news of Jesus Christ.
You see, what happened is that we began to give up the territory that we had gained. Somewhere in the 1930's, there was a repulsion with all the liberalism that was taking place in the university system. Rather than going in there and restoring things back where they should be, we simply just withdrew. The fruit of the kingdom of God in Romans 14:17 says, "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Whenever we are doing our job of invading the systems of the world with the kingdom of God, we are bringing righteous, peace and joy to these systems. That is the fruit. That is the evidence. What the church did, rather than taking the schools back, was to say, "Let's retreat. We are going to start our own."
Many schools, bible schools and bible colleges began around the 1930's and 1940's. The reason for this is that they were just reacting to the world. They did not take and seize those things and bring them back into order under the kingdom of God and His rule and reign. Instead, they just said, "We are just going to let that go and do our own thing."
Yet, God has called us to be salt and light to the earth. He said, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." He did not say, "You are something like salt. You have the appearance of light." You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are salt and you are light. You are supposed to be these things. Therefore, God has called us to penetrate the systems of this world. There is the government system, there is the educational system, there is the medical system, there is the entertainment system, there is the sport's system, and there is the religious system. God has called the church to be very active in penetrating these systems. What we have done is simply relegated them to other people. We have pulled back, done our own thing. Because of that, where there has been a void, the enemy has taken hold and taken control.
A lot of the time, the church originally held these systems, but they lost interest in them over time, gave up on them and abandoned them. Then the devil moved in and took them over for his own dark purposes. The church should not have given them up in the first place, but we did. So now it is time to move in and take them back for the kingdom of God.
Believers should be affecting their government for God's kingdom. This is true for all believers in all nations. But since I am from the United States, I am going to use some examples from my own nation for this teaching.
If you go to Washington, DC, my nations's capital, you will see God everywhere! When you walk onto the rotunda you'll see all these pictures of preachers, bibles, crosses, people praying… right there on the rotunda! The rotunda used to be a church up until the late 1800's. They held church every Sunday there. The military band was the worship team. You go into the rotunda of the nation's capital and see the statues. One is a statue of one of our Presidents in the 1800's. Before he was a President, he was an evangelist. You go through and take a right and you go in to see a man who was a pastor. He helped formulate the Bill of Rights. His brother was a pastor too and served in the army in the revolutionary war gallantly. Their father was the chaplain to George Washington. You see God everywhere in there, He is all through there!
When you go into the Supreme Court Building, you see Roman numerals one to ten. Those numbers represent the Ten Commandments. God is all through this place! I was a history major in college and a lot of that stuff never made it into my history books.
"Oh no," they said, "there's got to be the separation of church and state." Do you know where that comes from, where that began? It began with Thomas Jefferson, one of the early Presidents of our country. What happened was that a group wrote to him (I believe it was a Baptist group). They were afraid. They did not want this government to have a state religion like the Church of England, one that was a state-sponsored, state-paid religion. In England, everybody belonged to the Church of England. Not anything else was acceptable. They did not want the United States to do the same thing. Therefore, he wrote this statement. It was just a statement he wrote in a letter, that is all it was! He wrote about the separation of church and state so that the state could not impose religion in a state-sponsored way. He never said in there that religion could not affect government, because they all did! It was the way it was. It was, like normal, that we had preachers and ministers.
Look into the history of the Supreme Court. They would meet, and after they would meet, if they were convicting somebody to death for something, they would have a gospel presentation and lead that person to Jesus before they went out and hung him. It is in the records. It is in the history books. You have to read the journals. They did that! You can see that permeated our country and was all throughout our country. Moreover, that is the way the church was. The church penetrated the government. It penetrated every avenue of society. It penetrated the educational system. The church operated that way. Somewhere along the lines, we pulled back and said "No, we don't want to be involved in there anymore!" And we turned everything to the government. Any time there is a void, the enemy comes in and fills it. We're not about doing the Father's business.
Now it is time to change all of that.
Penetrating The Systems
I began to share in our last lesson how the church's job is to penetrate the various systems of the world and transform them for God's kingdom.
Jesus did this when He lived on this earth -- He affected everything around Him for the Kingdom of God. When He traveled throughout Galilee, He went into the synagogues, preaching everywhere the good news about the kingdom and healing people who had every kind of sickness and disease. You can wrap Jesus' life into two things. He simply declared the kingdom of God and He demonstrated the kingdom of God. Sometimes, he demonstrated and declared it. Both of those things were taking place.
The same things should be taking place day to day in our lives as well. For example, when the community has an event like a fair or local festival, we can participate in it and advance the Kingdom. We can set up a prayer booth, and when someone sits down in front of you, you can begin to prophesy into their life, into their life vocation. You do not even know what they do for a living, but you say, "I see you driving. What do you do?" They answer, "Well, I'm a driver." Again, we're ministering to somebody and I say, "Well, I see you teaching. What do you do?" They say, "Well, I'm a teacher." I say, "I see you're very creative." They respond, "Well, I teach cosmetology." When we do this, we are speaking into these people's lives very specifically and very clearly. Those are seeds being planted in that person that God knows. We demonstrate the kingdom of God. Then we can declare to them the source and the origin, the power that is doing it. It is the kingdom of God!
Do you know that you can penetrate any system because you are carriers of the kingdom rule and reign of God? That it is bigger than the darkness! And, you don't have to travel to do it. You can actually do it all this week. Do you work? Most of us do and that means we have contact with people at work? Does anyone at your work have a need? Does anyone there need prayer? Does everybody live in a house or apartment? Most of you do. Does anyone have neighbors? Do your neighbors have needs? There you go. Perfect! Opportunities! Does anybody go shopping? Has anyone been to the mall recently? The grocery store? Been to Costco? Walmart? There are always opportunities to bless somebody, or just to pray. We are on the winning side!
There was a disposition for advancing the kingdom of God. Jesus said in Matthew 1:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it." This is the disposition. However, I have to tell you that the church is not there, at least not the church in my country, the USA.
Let me give some statistics that speak to that, from George Barna, who leads a research group. They just research. He pulls together statistics, like the Gallup poll. They are like the Gallup poll of Christianity. Here are some of his conclusions that he came up with about a year and a half ago. He said this, "First of all, we have to recognize that the church really hasn't changed much over the years. In fact, the church is not really advancing. The church is absolutely declining here. The reason is that as society moves on the church has not been able to stay relevant."
Occasionally I hear someone say, "I just love it. I can just kind of go the church and it will be like this nice safe little place. You know, I am protected from the world."
I want to say "well, I'm glad that ministers to your need but that's not the role of the church. We are supposed to be out there changing the culture. Either you are going to be relevant, impacting the culture, or the culture is going to impact you!" The the church has not done a very good job of being relevant.
The second thing Barna says is that the evangelicals have declined. Who are the evangelicals? That is most of us! We have not been advancing. We simply have been declining. What has happened is that we simply have fallen asleep. Because of that, we have not been relevant, because we have not penetrated everything around us. Here are the rules: If you do not advance, you decline!
The church just was not advancing. We were not penetrating the government. We weren't penetrating the judicial system. All of a sudden, we woke up and said, "Oh man, we can't pray anymore? When did that start? We were able to pray the first 200 years. What happened?"
There is only one truth out there. Everything else is false or an imitation. And the only truth is the Word of God. This is it. Yet the Bible is only a resource book for so many people. I mean, for the past 25 years we have been trying to sell the Bible. We just have not been able to sell what is in it. People just kind of pick and choose whatever kind of Bible contents they like or are comfortable with.
Barna would say that despite literally billions of dollars spent on evangelism and Christian education in the past quarter century, the true message of the gospel has failed to penetrate the minds and hearts of most Americans. And, that would be true. We have a costless faith. It is just a costless faith. Barna also says this, "That currently only half of the adults who say they are Christians contend they are absolutely committed to the Christian faith."
Where are the other half? Well, would you admit to that? "I'm a non-committed Christian?" Most people won't admit it, but sadly that is true in many cases. Christianity becomes about our convenience. We take what fits comfortably into our lifestyle and we ignore or throw out the rest.
For example, there is a misunderstanding of the supernatural in a lot of Christian circles. Six out of ten adults do not believe there is a real devil. Do you know who believes in a real actual devil? The younger people believe it more than the older, probably because they have encountered some things in the spirit realm. In fact, the statistics say that the older you are the less likely you are to believe in the realm of the supernatural. (If you are reading the GodSpeak lessons, then this probably does not apply to you, but you are the exception to the rule.)
You cannot win a war if you deny the existence of your enemy. You would not even try to win if you did not think the devil is real or that he is to be taken seriously. Similarly, you cannot win the war if you refuse to use your primary weapons. We have created an army of isolationists.
There are 300,000 protestant churches in the United States and another 20,000 non-protestant churches. Now, that is a lot of churches! They outnumber post offices six-and-a-half to one. You do know that the post office is able to reach every home. There are 91,000 elementary and secondary schools. The church outnumbers the schools over three to one. You would think that with all of these outposts, we could cover the territory. Right? There are more churches than McDonald's or Burger King's. We should be able to cover the territory, right? With are all of these outposts out there, we should be able to penetrate the whole nation.
What then is our problem? We isolate from each other. Not only do we isolate from other churches but we compete with other churches. We think that they are the enemy. Why? Because they are not building the kingdom. They are building the church.
The last thing Barna says is that "We are the leaders." With most churches, the major objective is to fill their pulpits with good communicators, not with effective leaders. Most pulpit committees, whenever they are looking for a pastor, don't say "Give me the names of a few people that you've discipled and brought into leadership. Who are the people that you have equipped that are transforming their sphere of influence? Give me their name and phone number as a reference. I would like to speak to them."
Most pulpit committees never even go that far. What they ask for is, "Send me a tape. Let me hear a sermon. Let me hear a message. Let me hear a teaching," because that's what they're going for. Their mentality is that if we get good communicators in the pulpit, we should be able to change the world. Now that we have good communicators inside the four walls of the church, that's going to change everything outside? Hello? That does not seem to be working.
As the church, we need to be relevant and we need to begin to penetrate the key world systems, like business and government and education and such. And in order to do that, we need to be raising up leaders instead of raising up pew-sitters. We need to train and equip those in the body of Christ to fulfill their God-appointed destinies in advancing the kingdom of God in every aspect of life.
Transforming The World Systems
Bob Grass tells of seven things that he calls "the church's all time biggest blunders." Number one is that we have 'unbeliever doctrine.' Some of the seminaries say, "Parts of the miracles didn't really happen." It is taught. Another one is that we have tolerated division. Isn't that the truth? We've done pretty well at beating up and hating each other. We have cultivated a religious spirit. A religious spirit basically says this: if you don't do this but you do that, then you are a good Christian. Another blunder is that we have encouraged super-stars, we exalt certain people. Everybody goes to this meeting or that meeting because we are exalting super stars in the faith. Another blunder is that we have equated money with success.
Yet another blunder, a very serious one, is that we stayed in the pews and became irrelevant. We just taught people to be escape artists. We have propagated the philosophy, 'Let us just occupy till He comes. Let us just hold down the fort and maybe Jesus will come and save us from it.' But God has called us to advance the kingdom. Anytime we do not advance the kingdom of God and we back off, we create a void. What does the Bible say happens when you leave the house empty? Is the enemy going to look at that and think, "I think that we'll just leave that empty. I don't want to invade that because that space belongs to the church." No! Anytime that the church steps back and turns it over for nothing and leaves a void, the enemy comes in and takes over.
There are seven mind-molders (e.g., things that mold the and shape our thinking). These seven institutions are things like the government, church, and media. These things shape the way that we think. You do not have to have a majority to shape people's mentalities. Bob talked about the time he was in a meeting.
One time when he was at a Christian conference, they showed a video of a Nigerian crusade where over a million people were saved. They were panning and re-panning the audience to see if there really were millions there, with over a million who gave their hearts to Jesus. He stood in awe about this. As he was watching all this, a man next to him said, "Yes, and the Muslims will come in and will disciple them." He was offended at that. So he looked at the man and said, "what are you talking about that the Muslims are going to come in and disciple them?"
The man was from South Africa. He answered, "Well, that's what happened in South Africa. Just a small percentage, less than 10% of the population of South Africa are Muslims, but they control 30% of the government jobs. They control half of the school board positions. And now they are dictating policy."
It does not take a majority to change minds and make the decisions. It takes people who are radical and who are committed. Our objective is to create radical Christians to advance the kingdom of God. Protesting does not work. It is just exercising your right to free speech. All it does is say you have one voice. What works is to penetrate those systems and to change them from the inside.
Lance is a person who lives this out this type of penetration I have been talking about. He does not just talk but actually lives it out. Before he was a pastor of a church, he was a business consultant. Now, God is bringing him back into the business world. He is still pastoring a church, yet he's penetrating major systems. He said that, not too long ago, the United Nations (UN) asked him to meet with about twenty to thirty youth leaders from around the world. They would just simply bring people in from around the world, people they think would be very successful world leaders. They bring them in for about five or six months. Therefore, he went in. They invited him for two days and said, "You can do whatever you do for these two days."
This man also does business seminars where he talks about principles of leadership. Where did he get those principles? Right out of the Word! The people responded, "Those are awesome principles. Where did you get them?" The person who ran one particular course was so enthralled with what he was learning, he met with Lance and said, "I'd like for you to meet with about two hundred UN leaders." And he did! Where did he get those leadership principles? Right here in the Word of God!
He was telling us a story about a friend of his who is in consulting. His fees are around $9,000 a day and he is making major changes in education in the United States. He has simply been taking the principles out of the Word Of God, principles of how we relate to each other with respect. They write on the board the different rules of the class. You were invited to stay in the class if you follow the rules. He just basically took the Word Of God, because the principles work. Does tithing work whether you are a Christian or not a Christian? Absolutely! The principle of giving works. It just works.
If you are a believer, then you have the answer. Everything the world is looking for is found right here in the Word of God, the answers to all the solutions in your work, all the solutions in your neighborhood.
I mentioned (in an earlier lesson) very briefly the transformation that took place in the nation of Uganda, where they had the AIDS problem. They asked, "How do you solve the AIDS problem?" We said, "Let's look here, where the principles are. First, you just have one wife! Then you stay faithful to your one wife!"
They began to bring in the biblical principles. Within three to four years, they reduced the AIDS from 30% with women down to 4%, plus the miracles of God which were healing people. That was an awesome deal.
Then they said, "Well, that worked pretty good, now what can you do with the finances?" "What is the biggest problem with finances?" The answer was corruption in the government. "Well, you need to put Christians in those positions." And they turned that nation around. We watched that video. This is contained in the Transformations II video -- if you have not seen it, then get a copy and watch it.
The principles work! God has given you the principles in His Word. You can bring the kingdom of God into your situation. Only just bring God in! You don't have to come with "Well, God said you had to do it this way." You can just give them the principles. And all of a sudden, they say, "It works!".
Let me tell you something about the world. They do not have all the filters that the Christians have. They do not care about the source. All they want know is "Does it work?"
Christians often say, "I don't know. That person preached that message that time and I did not agree with one point. I don't know if I can trust anything that they say."
That is one of those points. Just look at the Word. There is so much in the principles of the Word of God that can be applied to you, where you work, in your neighborhood, in family situations. Also, when others see how they are working with you, they will say "Man, that was pretty good! Where did you get that?" Then you can tell them the source.
God has called us to advance the kingdom of God. Part of the role we want to do here as a church -- and this is important -- is to help you become equipped in order to do that. No matter where you are, your work, your home, your neighborhoods, whatever, God has called you to penetrate those systems to bring in the kingdom of God. The result will be righteousness, peace and joy.
God wants to put within you a certain disposition to be able to do it. I am not talking about becoming some bible-thumping freak. If you do that, then all you do is put up a wall and people cannot receive you. If they cannot receive you, you cannot build a bridge. Paul said, "To the Jew I became a Jew, to the Gentile I became a Gentile, to the pagan I became a pagan. Without compromising the convictions of God, I became those things." When you get to the house of God, you can freak out all you want. But let me tell you, if you're going to penetrate the systems, God needs to give you the wisdom to penetrate them. God has called you to do that. You can because the authority and power that you carry is greater than the authority and power that is out there. And, God will honor your obedience. He will honor that because you carry the stuff. That is what forcibly advancing the kingdom is like.
Are you in the army? The answer is "Yes." Whether you like it or not, you were inducted into God's army when you received Jesus. God is raising up a group of radical believers, radical in the sense that your life does not belong to you, to belongs to Him. These radical believers are interested in advancing His kingdom, penetrating the systems that God has put you into and bringing in the righteousness of God.
God wants you to be one of them. He wants you to bring the authority of Christ into the places you go and the things you do. Do you know what God will do? God will give you favor to accomplish that end. You will walk in and say, "I don't know why I'm telling you this." That is the favor of God. And expect the door to open. If it's not open, pray until it does, because God gives you the authority.
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