Kingdom Authority 1988

We'll start by reading the first nine verses of Psalm number two. Why do the nations rage when the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointment, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. In other words, let's get loose of God.

We don't want Him to rule over us. We're going to do our own thing. Neither citizen in the heavens shall laugh.

The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak to them in His wrath and vex them in His swordish pleasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree. The Lord has said unto me, Thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me and I shall give thee the nations for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel.

Some years ago, I attended a meeting of Christian students at Wayne State. We had a pastor, a Methodist pastor at Wayne State, a student pastor here at Moncks today. Isn't that something? Anyway, it was a few years ago, and it was in one of the upper floors of the student building in a little room away from the hustle and bustle of the campus.

The topic of the meeting was how to reach the Wayne State campus with the gospel. We got the feeling that there was not one of us in that room who had any hope of having an impact on the campus. The only place we seemed to feel bold and confident and any freedom to talk about the gospel was in that room with each other.

Everybody was aware that the atmosphere out there on the campus was hostile and indifferent and cynical and hard when it came to talking about Jesus. So we talked among ourselves. We had a nice time.

But you can be sure that there was absolutely no impact on the campus as a result of that meeting. Around the same time, maybe just a few years later, all things run together, you know, in the years past, there was this bunch of crazy Jesus freaks who were meeting in a house up on Mark Twain, just above Grand River. And they, too, felt the call from God to reach out with the gospel.

They also were aware that they were surrounded by a hostile, indifferent, cynical world. But these Christian hippies had the amazing confidence that they had the authority of God to reach out there and touch people, that they were destined to catch men, women, living souls into God's kingdom. And they did it.

We asked Ralph, who was the general of that little army, to give us a couple of guys, send a few of his troops down here and show us how to do it in this neighborhood. And so after a while, it took a while, the mother of one of the girls was going to bomb the place where they were living then, in Stansbury, and a couple other crises took place. But pretty soon, in fact, it was the 1st of May, if I remember from back here, the same day as today, that Bob Hoy, Tova, Milton, and Tommy and Louie took over a couple of flats over here in Vinewood.

And in a matter of weeks, it was wall-to-wall people at their nightly Bible studies. They were making disciples. People coming in from this neighborhood in droves.

They had authority. Now you may say, well, yeah, but that was Jesus-freak time. It was a fad.

It was happening all over the country. It was a particular season. That may all be true.

But you can't take away from them the fact that these people were convinced that they had authority. And that when they spoke to their friends, stopped a stranger on the street, reached out and helped somebody in the name of the Lord, they were convinced that they were under the anointing of God, that they had a word from God, that the Holy Spirit was at work in what they were doing. So here we are today.

We're gathering here together, praising God for His mercy to us, thanking Him for the grace which has been released into our lives through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We... Some dramatic things have happened in just about every one of our lives here. We have been set free from our bondage.

We have been raised from the dead. We have been lifted to the right hand of the Father with our Lord, sitting with Him in heavenly places. And we have been anointed with power from on high, the power of the Holy Spirit.

The service ends. We go out those doors into one of the most challenging mission fields you're going to find anywhere on earth. And what happens? Do we live among our friends in our places of work, in our neighborhoods, as men and women who have been raised from the dead, who are under the anointing of power from on high, the Holy Spirit, do we take the authority of heaven and bring it down into the places where we live and work? Do we exercise that authority and have an impact on the situations and the people with whom we deal every day? And we have to say, I think most of us have to say, that we're like the disciples, you know, saying, Lord, increase our faith.

Give us boldness. From the time Jesus rose out of the waters of His baptism, He was absolutely certain of one thing, that He had authority. Remember how God the Son, though He was, He divested Himself of His divine prerogatives, and He was a human being, like we are, dependent, just as we are, to walk by faith.

He didn't snap His fingers and make the sky fall in. But He was convinced that Psalm 2 applied, which was the coronation hymn for the kings of Israel, applied in a unique way to Him. I will declare the decree.

Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.

Jesus walked in lowliness and meekness all His life, but He was certain that He was under the authority of His Father. Well, now, you looked at Him. He didn't look like much.

I mean, He was meek and lowly of heart. He didn't look like the big shots. So that 40 days after His baptism, Satan comes along and offers Him Satan's kind of authority, the kind of authority this world respects and looks up to.

And Jesus tells Him to get lost. Reading from Luke 4, starting at verse 5, The devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to Him, To You I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to Me, and I give it to whom I will. If You then will worship Me, it shall all be Yours.

Jesus answered Him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. No shortcuts. No compromise.

No coalition government with Satan to get some kind of power. He's going to exercise these hidden, mysterious, invisible authority which God His Father has given Him only in the Father's way, only in the Father's program. He goes back to His hometown, Nazareth, enters the synagogue, and stands up to read.

They give Him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He rolls it open to the place, Isaiah 61, where it says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who were oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Roll the thing back together again, gave it to the attendant, sat down on the platform.

The eyes of all in the synagogue are looking at Him, and He says, This day, this scripture, has been fulfilled in your ear. That's authority. Lowly, meek, and yet always doing exactly what the Father shows Him to do.

So He, in fact, brought good news to the poor, delivered the captives, opened the eyes of the blind, lifted the burdens, gave hope to the people who were looking for the kingdom. But Jesus did more. Jesus gave His authority to His disciples of all ages, including us.

Now, we have authority. After the resurrection, the disciples met Him in a mountain in Galilee, which He had told them to go to, and they saw Him, and they worshiped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, in Matthew 28, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I have put you always close to me. All authority is mine now. Now, I'm giving it to you.

Now, without that authority, those men would have been absolutely and utterly lost. We see exactly the same thing in Acts chapter 1. After the resurrection, the disciples at verse 6 say, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has fixed by His own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. Without that power, all they would have been doing, they would have been sitting around in that room, that upper room in Jerusalem, just like we were sitting in that upper room in the student building, and they would have been talking to each other about Jesus and reminiscing about the past, and that would have been it.

So what is this authority that Jesus gives to His disciples? When He says, All authority that you give to me, go therefore. Jesus gives us authority to do four things. First of all, He gives us the authority to carry a cross.

Second, He gives us the authority to pray to the Father. Third, He gives us the authority to make disciples, and fourth, He gives us the authority to break through the gates of death. Now the first and the essential, the basic authority, this is where we start, no shortcuts, is the authority to carry a cross.

Many people today have the idea that to walk around through your whole life carrying a cross is some kind of sacrifice, something morbid, perhaps even weak, but the truth is, to carry a cross is a thing of divine power, for that cross is the only source of redemptive power at work in this world. And I'm not just talking about the cross that He carried for us, died on for us, I'm talking about the cross that we carry in response to His demand. Reading from Matthew 16, you remember, just after Peter had proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, comes this other episode.

From that time, verse 21, from that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen to You. But He turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan.

You're a hindrance to Me. You are not on the side that God would have meant. Peter doesn't understand that the only way Jesus can do this is to go to the cross and die.

Peter doesn't understand that the only way Peter's going to get anywhere is to do the same thing. And he's going to do it. This man also is going to go to a cross and he's going to die.

This is why the very next verses are connected with the passage I just read. Jesus told His disciples, If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. I'm going to a cross and so are you if you're serious.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? What shall a man give in return for his soul? The source of power, and the only source of power in the body of Christ is that cross, His cross and ours. Any power in the body of Christ that is not connected with that cross is the money.

I don't care whether you have some connection with a big shot, or your pockets are full of money, or you have a dynamic personality, or whatever it is that you think that you can contribute to the kingdom becomes demonic if it isn't connected with the cross and first killed, and then raised from the dead. So, we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, not because we're such big heroes, but because Jesus, by His dying, gives us the power to do that. The authority to carry the cross, to pour out our lives, to lay down our lives, to be servants.

Often when we have no idea where it's going to lead, or how this is going to work out, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies or dies alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus is talking there about Himself and about us. We also can be that grain of wheat.

We can think that way, we can live that way, we can die that way, we can rise that way, because He gives us the authority to die to ourselves and rise up into that kind of freedom. Secondly, Jesus gives us the authority to pray to the Father. Ask of me and I shall give thee the nations for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, He'll give it to you. Hitherto you've asked nothing in my name. Now ask, and you shall receive that your joy may be full.

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest, always giving us the assurance that if we come to the Father as His disciples, in His name, because we belong to Him, we can be positive, certain, we can come with faith knowing that we'll be heard. Jesus, by His cross, gives us the authority now to come into the throne of God and ask. So don't pussyfoot.

Don't mumble. Don't stand around and wring your hands. Don't look out the window and wonder whether there is a God.

Come into the presence of God before the throne and ask. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the nations for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thirdly, Jesus gives us the authority to make disciples.

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. And for us here in Detroit, and this holds for any major city of North America, we don't have to go far to find the nations of the world.

They've come to us. And we've got them in this room right now. We've got people connected with, even with government connections in Africa and all over the place.

In here now. So the Lord says, go to these people who are out there that I've brought right into your city and bring them into my kingdom. Bring them under my word.

Bring them under my teaching. Disciple them. Almost every one of us, perhaps every one of us knows a couple people, one or two people, who will respond if we will draw near to them.

People who will respond, they'll follow us into the kingdom. They'll walk with us right into the waters of baptism. They'll come with us right into the footsteps of Jesus.

If we will exercise the authority we have already been given, draw near to these people, give them some good news. Don't worry about whether they smoke cigarettes. Give them some good news.

God will take care of that. Give them some good news. Break their chains.

Open their eyes. Lift their burdens and set them free. Finally, we have been given by Jesus the authority to break through the gates of death.

I tell you, you're Simon Peter, you're Peter the Rock. And on this rock, your confession or you, make your choice. I will build my church in the gates of Hades, the region of the dead.

You shall not prevail against me. Those gates will have to yield to the church because the church, the body, has the authority to break through. We're more than conquerors if we don't love God.

So we go and we call people out of their death super, their death bondage, their death addiction, into life, paying the price of the cross to do that. With our natural eye, we look at people and we say, that guy's too far gone. He can't be reached.

She has gone too far. There's no way I can get through to her. This man over here is so successful in the things of this world, his heart is as hard as a rock.

There's no hope that he's ever going to listen. But with the eye of the spirit, we see in every one of those cases and many more, they are wrapped around the chains of death. The successes and the failures, both are imprisoned behind these iron bars of the region of the dead and we have been given the authority to set these people free.

Ask of me and I shall give thee the nations for thy inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. He's talking about authority. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. He's talking about authority. The authority given to the crucified and risen Lamb of God who is now King of Kings and Lord of Lords and he now gives this to us.

He has given us, we have it now, the authority to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, follow him. So let's do it. He has given us the authority to come into the presence of the living God, His Father and ours and ask and it's done.

So let's do it. He's given us the authority to make disciples of all nations. Done more than that.

He brought the nations right to us. We don't even have to get on a boat or a jet. They're right here.

So let's do it. He has given us the authority to break through those chains of death and free those captives. So let's do it.

Today, when you go out the door, think of yourself. Remember that you go out as an anointed servant of the living God and expect that at least once this week, you're going to find yourself at some point standing face to face with a living soul who is right for the kingdom. When that moment comes and you'll know it, open your mouth or get down on your knees and start washing your feet.

Do whatever a servant of God is to do in that situation and you will see the gates of death break open and release that captive to your care. Let's take some time now just to wait upon God and let him speak to our hearts.