“It is truly possible for human people to walk in the divine, and Christ came to show us the way. It is by rediscovering our true identity in Him that we can begin to move into the promises of God regarding the miraculous.”
Source: Preacher Talks (@PreacherTalks), Bill Johnson – When Heaven Invades Earth, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB5Vu8a2TUY, Uploaded Oct 19, 2013. (Accessed June 16, 2022.)
TRANSCRIPT:
All I want to do this morning is a tune-up. We do a little tune-up every once in a while. The Lord really directs us, as different ones of us who stand up here—He’ll put it on our hearts to repeat something that we’ve taught in times past, sometimes multiple times. And I always feel a little bit self-conscious about it, but I also felt this more strongly yesterday, as I was thinking about today, that there are just times where we need a tune-up. We need a tune-up for what we already know and believe and have committed ourselves to.
So, for probably 13, 14 years, maybe as many as 15 years, we’ve been running full speed ahead with what I’m going to share this morning. But I want to put it into context. I travel with and do ministry with a lot of friends around the planet, and it’s a real treat. Some of them, like Randy Clark and others, I’m with all the time, and they have very key, primary messages that they carry to city after city, country after country. And I’m there with them as they share that message for the tenth time that I’ve heard it. But I’ll be honest with you, every single time they bring that word, something comes alive in me.
How many of you could hear somebody preach on conversion, on being born again, and something just starts burning in you? Even though you’ve heard it before and you’re already born again, you’re just ready to do the altar call again. I mean, it’s like there’s something that burns by hearing truth. That’s kind of how I want to approach this morning, also realizing that we have so many new people that it’s probably good just to ensure that we are all on the same page from season to season as we go through our life in this wonderful, wonderful journey the Lord’s put us on.
God and man—there’s this reality called friendship, communion, that’s represented in something that we call prayer. Prayer, unfortunately, ends up as a religious tag for an activity instead of the actual friendship, fellowship, and conversation to have with God. It’s two-sided, and the backbone of life is the fact that every one of us called out to the Lord, and He heard us. If you were to take every person in this room and reduce us down to one common denominator, it would be that one thing: we called out in the name of the Lord, and He heard us.
That whole relationship of God and man—that He has longed for to be close—is because He made us in His image so that, together, we could commune and fellowship together. That which He has such passion for is called fellowship; it’s called communion. When I talk about, when I teach on fellowship in the church—fellowship member to member—I always define it as the exchange of life. It’s the fact that when I meet with my friend, I’m able to pour into them, but they’re able to pour into me. It goes both ways; it’s not pulpit to audience. It is actual relationship that is seen by me giving you something that costs me something and then, in return, receiving from you. That’s fellowship. Well, it’s from God to man and man to God as well.
So, the strength of life is prayer; it’s communion; it’s fellowship, friendship with God. But the strength or the backbone of prayer is this one simple phrase in what we refer to as the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” And it goes on from there. It’s not really the Lord’s Prayer—it’s not an appropriate title—but it helps us all to know what we’re talking about. It’s not the Lord’s Prayer because, in that prayer, there’s the confession of sin, and He had none. He is eternally God, but He took on flesh for a season to do something we couldn’t do for ourselves, our role.
And He taught us a pattern prayer, a model prayer, and this phrase: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,” is the backbone for all prayer. Every prayer you’ve ever prayed that had any impact at all had something to do with that phrase of God’s world impacting this one. The heartbeat of prayer is that, “God, we want Your absolute perfect will in our life, maybe in this relationship, in this business, in my body health-wise—whatever it might be that we’re praying over—we are actually praying, ‘Kingdom of God, come.'”
Jack Taylor, when he was here, spoke to us about the actual verb tense and stuff that I have to read a book to find out because I don’t know it myself. But I’m smart enough to buy books or hang out with smart people—one or the other works for me. But he was telling us about this particular verse, that the verb tense really means, “Kingdom of God, come; will of God, be done.” It’s actually a declarative thing; it’s not just a request, as though we needed to persuade God. He has already revealed that this is His purpose on planet Earth, and we align our hearts with Him and make a declaration—not as though we had any position to boss God around. He’s already determined to do it. What He’s looking for is bold partners who will represent Him on a planet that He made for His glory. “Kingdom of God, come; will of God, be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” And that’s the backbone of all prayer.
The Lord answers every prayer that we pray, except for those that violate our purpose. Chris Gore reminded us some time ago—or actually taught us—that Jesus never taught on what to do with unanswered prayers because it was never written into the equation. He designed you, in fellowship with Him, to move His heart and to bring about His invasion.
So, today, I want to talk to you about heaven invading Earth. Back before man was created, there were three archangels: Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. There was a rebellion in heaven. Satan (Lucifer) wanted to be worshiped. He wanted to be exalted like God. He wanted to be seated on the throne and have everyone exalt him. He was caught up in his own beauty, his own splendor, and his own unique giftedness that he had. He got caught up and preoccupied with how God designed him, and he wanted to be worshiped. He was booted out of heaven, and the Bible says the dragon took a third of the stars with him.
I don’t know if it means literally stars that, out of what God created, a third of them were under the enemy’s dominion. I don’t know if it meant stars or if it was a specific reference to a third of the angels that fell with him. Regardless, we know that planet Earth became a place where the devil and his entourage had habitation here. And in that rebellion, God decided to defeat the devil through people—human beings—that He would create in His own image who chose to worship Him by choice.
So here the Lord, with a word, with a breath, could destroy all the powers of darkness quite easily. But He instead chose, since the devil wanted to be worshiped, to make humanity in His own likeness, in His own image, and raise up a company of people on planet Earth that would worship Him by choice. And through those, there would be defeat of all the powers of darkness. The devil has never been a threat to God. The devil is not the opposite of God; he’s the opposite of Michael. He’s a created being with extremely limited powers. In fact, his plug has already been pulled, so it’s diminishing as we speak.
But that doesn’t mean he has no power, but he does have no authority. It’s like cutting a branch off a tree. It still may be green, but it is dead; it just doesn’t know it yet. So here the Lord creates—He comes to planet Earth, and the Bible says it’s formless and void. It says the Holy Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters, and then God spoke, and creation took place.
When He told Israel, “I will not drive out the enemies of the promised land all at once. I’m going to do it little by little,” why? Because if I do it all at once, where the enemies were, the beasts will come in, they’ll become too numerous for you, and you won’t be able to obtain a victory. So, the Lord says, “I’m going to release it to you little by little.” Here with Adam and Eve, they were to have children, who would have children, and as they did, they were to expand the boundaries of the garden until the entire planet was covered with absolute perfect divine order. And through that, there would be the complete disruption to the powers of darkness and their work on planet Earth.
But instead, Adam and Eve sinned. They partook of the forbidden fruit, and here it is: we have this amazing action that takes place. God comes to Adam, and He gives them this commission to subdue the Earth, and He puts keys in their hands, and He gives them the purpose for their being. And there was the intimacy, there was the relationship, the delight. When God has us worship Him, it’s not because He’s an egotist in need of our affirmation. It’s because love always chooses the best, and you always become like the one you worship, and there’s nothing He could want better for you than for you to be like Him. And so, He brings us into this relationship where worship just erupts volcanically because see, we see His beauty, His wonder, His splendor.
And so, God hands these keys of authority to Adam and Eve for their purpose on planet Earth. But they sinned. The Bible says that we are slaves of the one we obey. And so, when they listened to the serpent, their ownership became his ownership. Fast forward. The Gospel of Luke: Jesus is on a 40-day fast—another garden if you will, a wilderness. And that enemy comes to Him. The devil comes to Him, and shows Him all the kingdoms of the world. And he makes this statement: he says, “All of these kingdoms of the world I will give to You if You will bow down and worship me.” And he makes this statement: he says, “For they have been handed over to me, and I can give them to whomever I wish.”
They were handed over to me. When was that? That was back in the garden. When Adam and Eve sinned, they became slaves and gave up their rights of authority. A slave has no possessions; they became the possession of the slave owner. So he comes before Jesus, and let me put it in my words: it’s as though Satan says to Jesus, “I know what You came for, I know why You’re here, and You know what I want. I want to be worshiped. You want the kingdoms. You bow before me, I’ll give you the keys back.”
Jesus has nothing to do with it. He goes to the cross, tricks the devil into killing Him—it’s beautiful. It couldn’t happen until He gave permission. That’s a whole sermon by itself. He absolutely tricks the devil. The devil always goes a step too far.
Graham Cook said some time ago, he said, “If the devil would have realized the result of the crucifixion of Jesus, the devil would have tried to kill everyone who was trying to kill Jesus.” Just brilliant.
So, Jesus dies, He rises from the dead, He ascends to the Father, and He comes back to the disciples. He says, “All authority has been given to Me, all in heaven and on Earth. Therefore, because of the authority I have, go into all the world, preach the gospel, disciple nations.” You’re familiar with the Great Commission. Let me put it in my terms: Jesus shows up after resurrecting from the dead, defeating the power of the enemy, the power of darkness, defeating sin, defeating death itself. He comes back to His disciples, and He dangles keys in front of their eyes—the keys of authority—and He says, “All right, let’s get back to plan A. I have an assignment for humanity. You have a purpose.”
God can forcibly take over anything; it’s just not who He is. He’s a lover. The greatest conquests come through romance. So, He imparts these keys of authority back to the disciples, and He gives them this incredible commission, this incredible assignment. I want you to go to Matthew chapter 4 with me. We’re going to read some scripture out of this chapter to put into context this whole ministry of Jesus on planet Earth. He came to destroy the works of the Devil.
By the way, just to put this in context: the Bible says that God owns everything in the heavens and on Earth. But in Psalm 115, I think it’s verse 16, He says, “The heavens were made for God, but the Earth was made for man.” What I want you to see as I talk to you is the heart of God. It’s not like you and I earned anything; it’s not like we are significant in and of ourselves. It’s that the Lord has woven purpose into our very being. Everyone in this room has been made in the image of God, but not in a cookie-cutter fashion. Every person represents an aspect of God’s nature that nobody else can represent as well as you do. That’s why I’ve been saying here for the last few years that when people find out who God’s made them to be, they never want to be anybody else because there’s such a perfect blending of personal gifting, desire, and opportunity to be all that God has called us to be.
So here we are in the Gospel of Matthew. John the Baptist actually started the declaration, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” but we’re going to pick up in verse 17, where Jesus picked up that message of John. “From that time,” verse 17, “Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'”
Verse 23: “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel or good news of the Kingdom, healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then His fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Great multitudes followed Him.”
Go back to verse 17 for a minute because I want to make sure that we’re on the same page here. As Jesus starts His ministry with this decree, John the Baptist is the first one to make this statement: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” But it became the model for Jesus’s ministry.
Does it make sense to you that Jesus actually lived and ministered in the Old Testament? The New Testament—or actually the New Covenant—is in blood. So, when the blood of Jesus was shed, that technically is the beginning of the New Covenant. What Jesus was doing is that John technically closed out the Old Testament in ministry, and then Jesus began to proclaim and model something that created a momentum that would become New Testament lifestyle. He both closed out the requirements of the law in the Old Testament, and He established a model.
How do we know this? Because it says of Him, “He came to destroy the works of the devil.” And He turned to His disciples and said, “As the Father sent Me, I send you.” So, here’s this momentum, this model that has been established through Jesus’s life for life and ministry. He passes the baton off to the disciples, and He says, “All right, now the assignment that I had is now your assignment.” And so, we know that that’s New Testament life. We know it also through the teaching of Jesus in The Great Commission when He told His own disciples, “Now teach those who become your converts all that I taught you.” The point is that Jesus wanted what He taught and modeled to be carried on as the practical, normal Christian life. As I like to tell folks, Jesus is the most normal Christian in the Bible. He modeled the normal Christian life.
So here we have this statement: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” In Hebrews 6, there’s a list of six doctrines that are called the foundational doctrines of the church. In that bit of instruction, there are things mentioned like repentance from dead works, faith towards God, baptisms, resurrection, etc. I want to just take the first two: repentance from dead works, and here I want to illustrate in a sense pictorially what repentance looks like, knowing that part of what repentance looks like I can’t model for you, but I have to talk to you about.
All right, here it is. Sin is over here—sorry, guys, sin is over here—and He says, “Repent from dead works, faith towards God.” It’s one motion: from, towards. Various parts of the Gospel emphasize different aspects of that two-sided coin, if you will—repentance from dead works, faith towards God. It’s that about-face. Yet the word repentance actually means to change the way you think. But here’s the thing I want to make sure I don’t know that I’ve made very clear in times past: when we talk about repentance as it means to change the way you think, He’s not trying to exalt human intellect. He’s not trying to say, “Listen, you can be transformed if you just think happy thoughts,” although there’s a lot of people I wish would just think happy thoughts—but we’ll leave that where it is.
He’s not talking about just taking a few positive thoughts, memorizing them, quoting them 50 times a day, and then that’ll make you a different person. It’ll have a natural effect, but it’s not what He’s talking about. Repentance is this: it is an absolute deep remorse over sin that produces a transformation in perspective on life. It is not visible until there is a change in thinking. It means to change the way you think, but it’s not merely an intellectual matter. It’s not merely a “just exercise that old self-will and pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” It’s not that at all. It is such remorse over sin, such helpless condition apart from the grace of God, that in turning, I find it is possible to see from Divine perspective. That’s repentance.
And the Lord says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” From dead works towards God. That’s interesting. Matthew’s Gospel is primarily written to Jews. Instead of saying “Kingdom of God,” he would say “Kingdom of Heaven,” out of respect for the Jews. Writing the name “God” was a very reverent moment, and there were certain traditions and principles they went through just in writing the name. Because the Kingdom of Heaven is discussed—or Kingdom of God is discussed—so much in there, Matthew just refers to it as the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s not two different things; they’re the same thing.
When He says “Kingdom,” King’s dominion, He’s talking about God’s world of absolute perfect order that exists there, which He meant to exist here. But because of sin, it’s been chaos. So, He’s saying, “Repent, turn from that, for the kingdom is at hand. It’s within reach.” Just follow me here: many people repent enough to get forgiven, but they don’t repent enough to see the kingdom. There’s “from,” but there’s also “unto.” That’s not—I don’t mean that as a condemning word; it’s an inviting word. It’s all in the grace that’s already been given.
When Jesus talked about being born again to Nicodemus in John 3, He said, “Unless you’re born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Conversion gives a gift to every born-again person; there is a supernatural ability to perceive the kingdom, the dominion, the realm of God’s dominion. There’s a gift; it’s in your nature. I’m not talking about those who have open visions (those people make me sick—no, just kidding). Fighting off jealousy like crazy.
No, now honestly, I’m so grateful for that gift because there are some that have just such an openness that they see in the unseen realm. They see as naturally as I see in the natural, and that gifting in people is really a great strength to us. And I rely on those folks quite heavily, and I am honestly thankful for the gift, all the while saying, “Hey, how about me?” But we’ll just leave that between me and God.
But when I talk about seeing the Kingdom, I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about that, neither am I talking about you imagining—just trying to imagine, “I have no money, so I’m going to imagine the bank account full.” I’m not talking about human imagination. I’m talking about something that exists in the unseen realm that has to be perceived by faith. Let me rephrase that: faith enables perception. Faith is the conviction of things hoped for. So, like this, there is a burning conviction in my soul that what I am praying for has already been answered. That conviction—faith—gives me the capacity to perceive ahead of time what’s coming.
The verse I wanted to read though, verse 23—let’s read that again. Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria. They brought to him all sick people, people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptic, paralytics, and he healed them.
Jesus has brought us into a life of conflict. I don’t mean with your neighbor—although it may show up there. He’s brought us into a life of conflict because he actually illustrated it in this verse in Matthew 12:28. He said, “If I cast a demon out of you by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”
So here’s what he’s doing: he’s talking practically. “I cast a demon out of you. This is what happened: I did it by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God came upon you, and that’s the Spirit that contains the realm called the Kingdom.” Let me break it down because this is important. What he does is, he says, “All right, here’s a group of people he’s talking to. They’ve already seen him cast out demons, so he’s trying to give them a behind-the-scenes view of what really happened.” And he says, “Let me tell you what happened when that demon let go of that lady. What really happened was my world collided with darkness, and light always wins over darkness.” So he’s trying to give them an understanding of what they can’t see, so that when they see it happen again, they can understand it happening again.
“If I cast a demon out of you by the Spirit of God”—I love that phrase because it models the fact that Jesus could only do what God enabled him to do. Now, don’t misunderstand me; I get misunderstood on this point frequently. Jesus is eternally God—eternally God—but he chose to live with restrictions, human restrictions. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have access to who he was; he just chose to live with restrictions. So he says, “The Son of Man can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do.” He actually meant it when he said, “The Son of Man can do nothing.” That’s actually the right word—nothing. He couldn’t do anything. All the stuff that he’s famous for, that we applaud him for—all the miracles, the walking on water, the extraordinary events of scripture—all of those he did because the Spirit of God came upon him and revealed to him the heartbeat, the very breath, the very word of the Father.
So he was modeling something that could be done by any other believer. Now, if I see Jesus doing extraordinary miracles in scripture and he did them as God, I’m impressed, but I’m not compelled to follow. I mean, if he did them as God, then I’m the spectator that says, “I’m so glad I was here, this is amazing. Thank you, God, for doing this while I was in the room.” But when I find out that he did it through Jesus, who, in a sense, put aside his access to everything as God and instead tapped into it as an obedient, yielded man, then suddenly I can’t stay where I’m at. Suddenly, I am compelled to pursue an example that was given to me. That changes everything. It changes absolutely everything. Suddenly, I can’t be the spectator I could have been a minute ago, if it was just God doing what God does—that’s awesome—but when I see it was Jesus the man, who was God, but the man who surrendered to the Father, the Spirit of God came upon him and did something, now I see that Jesus was illustrating what was possible for every person who had no sin, which is what the blood of Jesus accomplishes, and every person who was then yielded to the presence and power of the Spirit of God.
Some things just require a response. I don’t mean a response from you; I mean what Jesus does. Some things require a response. I remember meeting with a youth group years ago, and I said, “Listen, this whole thing about Jesus—he is either who he said he is or he’s the greatest deceiver that ever walked the planet, and either one of those extremes requires a response from us. If he’s who he said he is, then I must respond to that and discover my purpose for being on planet Earth. But if he’s not, he has had such an impact on humanity that I am obligated to pour out my life to protect everyone from this lie.”
What Jesus has done in modeling for us—God becoming man, living with restrictions and limitations, and yet displaying the perfect purpose, the will of God on the earth—that cannot just be observed; it must be followed. It must be run after and embraced, and that’s the life that Jesus has given to us. That’s the Christian life.
We cause conflict. In what way? “If I cast a demon out of you by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” Let me put it this way: if I cast a demon out of you by the Spirit of God, then the light of my world collides with the darkness in yours, and darkness will never defeat light. Come on! And it’s a beautiful picture of this gospel that we have been given to preach and to declare.
There’s one other aspect of this message that I want to confess and declare over you. It’s this: I read a book back in the, I think it was the ’80s, probably early ’80s, middle ’80s—Kingdom Now but Not Yet. It’s a phrase I loved when I heard it. I thought, “Oh, this makes sense.” The Kingdom is present tense; it’s a real thing. I realize we don’t get it all now, in the sense that there is actually a heaven. You know, how many of you know that if God in all of his glory were to show up right now, we would all be crispy critters in moments? I mean, it’s a whole lot more than what any of us could handle, so we don’t get it all in that sense.
But when this first started being declared in circles that I was in, it was a liberating promise. It was this liberating decree of, “Look at what God has made available! Yes, there’s heaven, but look at what he’s given us access to now! It’s within reach right now!” And when that phrase first started, in at least the circles that I was in, when it first started being circulated, it just gave us so much hope. But I’ve got to be honest with you, in the last 15 years, I don’t think I have ever heard that phrase except when it was used to limit what you could have in God and to give a theology around what didn’t happen.
If you pray for somebody and they die instead of being healed, do not create a theology around disease—you can’t find it in Jesus. Do not create one to feel better about your experience. I refuse to. I refuse. I refuse to lower the gospel to my level of experience. There’s just a cold realization that we haven’t arrived yet, and we have to deal with it without creating “theological” reasons why this happened and that happened. So, in recent years, I hear this wonderful phrase that used to stir my heart up with vision—now it just gives me shivers. You know, just shivers. Because it is so offensive to me now, because it’s like people want to stand up and say, “Well, here, you can experience a sample, you can have a sample of God’s goodness, and who knows? It’s his sovereign choice when to bless you and how.”
And so, it’s like samples of perfume or samples of deodorant you get in the mail, or samples of whatever it might be. Who wants samples? Go to Costco, get a little sample—don’t give me a sample! I want beef! I want a meal! And Jesus didn’t come to sprinkle us with little samples so that we would hunger for heaven. He gives us encounters because it’s not hungering for a place; it’s hungering for a person. That’s right.
So, I’ve been telling folks lately, I say, “Listen, if you hear anybody that comes along, and they quote that, and you listen to them, and you find out they’re saying it to explain to you what you can’t have right now, put your fingers in your ears and go—just block yourself from that junk. I don’t want a theology about what didn’t happen. What I want is to be able to learn how to overcome and go for it the next time, until I can accurately, adequately, and efficiently demonstrate the life of King Jesus—no excuses.”
Categories: Bethel "Church", New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)