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We are living in the strangest of times. The vast majority of Christian leaders in the Western Church have spiritually deteriorated to the place where they view New Testament Apostolic Christianity 101 as cultic and offensive! But the good news is it will not always be this way. Let’s look at what God says about it…
 JOHN CONNECTING HIS DISCIPLES TO JESUS
John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin. God had raised John up to be the forerunner, to prepare the way spiritually, for Jesus’ message and ministry. God always raises up a forerunner or a forerunner people to proclaim ahead of time the coming message. This is so the hearts of people will be prepared for what is coming.
John had been arrested for the truth he lived and proclaimed. By the way, don’t be surprised if there isn’t a temporary personal price to be paid if you answer God’s call to faithfulness! Now let’s look at what John does after he was arrested.
2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him (Jesus), “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear (Isa. 35:5-6), and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them (Isa. 61:1). 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” 7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. 9 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is he of whom it is written (Mal. 3:1), “ ‘Behold, I send my (God the Father’s) messenger before your (Jesus’) face, who will prepare your (Jesus’) way before you.’ 11 Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matthew 11:2-11)
Notice the last phrase of the message Jesus sent to John in verse six. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.” People are sometimes offended by what God does, but more often than not, that are offended by what God does not do. After John’s messengers left, Jesus addressed those around Him and He vindicated John’s courage (Mt. 11:7-8); he called him one who was more than a prophet (Mt. 11:9); the Father’s messenger (Mt. 11:10), the greatest man who had ever been born (Mt. 11:11) and the burning and shining lamp (Jn. 5:35). John had heard the Father’s voice at Jesus’ baptism (Mt. 3:17). Gabriel had foretold that John would be great in God’s sight and would operate in the spirit and power of Elijah (Lk. 1:15-17). Do you think, given all of the aforementioned information about John, that maybe, just maybe, there is something we can learn from him? I think so! THE THREE SUPERNATURAL GENERATIONS IN REDEMPTIVE HISTORY Jesus asked the multitude three times what they expected when they went out into the wilderness to hear John (Mt. 11:7-9). Did they expect to see a reed shaken by the wind, or a man clothed in soft clothing or maybe even a prophet? Jesus told them that John was more than a prophet, he was the man sent as the Father’s personal messenger before Jesus’ face, sent to prepare the Messiah’s way, by changing the spiritual atmosphere with his life and with his message. Jesus said that John was the greatest man who had ever walked the earth (besides Jesus) and that he was part of the fulfillment of the promise of Elijah coming back to Israel (Mt. 11:14; 17:10-12; Lk. 1:17). When an omniscient being asked His creation a question, or a series of questions, it isn’t because He is seeking information. He was asking these questions so that “they” would get the answer. Get it? Jesus was asking them if they understood the implications for their living in the generation of the presence of a man of John’s spiritual stature. John’s very presence, message and ministry, was a statement from heaven that they were living in a transitional, supernatural generation. The same will be true when the Two Witnesses are on earth in Revelation chapter 11. We should ask the question then, what is a transitional supernatural generation? A supernatural generation is one in which the majority of God’s people are eye witnesses of demonstrations of the power of God on a regular basis. There are only three supernatural generations mentioned in the Word of God. The first supernatural generation was the generation of Moses, when God established the Old Covenant. The second supernatural generation was the generation while Jesus was on earth and for a short while afterwards when God was using the apostles to establish the New Covenant. And the third supernatural generation will be the generation of believers who are on the earth when Jesus returns to establish His Millennial Kingdom. In each of these transitional supernatural generations, God significantly increases the measure of power and revelation that His people regularly experience. But greater privilege requires greater dedication. The reason this is necessarily true is for protection from both God’s zeal and Satan’s counter attack. THE KINGDOM SUFFERS VIOLENCE
11 Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven (New Covenant era) is greater (in opportunity) than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered (permits) violence, and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11:11-12)
12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence, and the violent have been seizing it by force. (Matthew 11:12 HCSB)
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God…12 Now we have received…the Spirit…that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-12)
Jesus introduced two new ideas. First, that great privilege and opportunity in God was now available. Second, that it would require spiritual violence to experience it. In the Old Testament, there was a great limitation on what a believer could experience in God. The Spirit only came on God’s anointed to empower them to accomplish a specific task. God only anointed a very small number of people (kings, prophets or judges). God had not yet opened the door for all His people to experience the deep things of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10-12). He opened this door after Jesus established the New Covenant by His death (Heb. 10:19-22). Thus, in the New Testament era, all can experience much more by the empowering and indwelling Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God now suffers violence. To “suffer” violence means that God “permits” (requires and rewards) spiritual violence in our pursuit of the deeper things of God. Jesus used the word “violence” to speak of a lifestyle of holy abandonment to God. Jesus was speaking of spiritual violence, not physical violence. Spiritual violence points to being willing to pay any price of self denial in seeking and obeying God. Radical obedience is violent because it is disruptive to our worldly pursuits. It violently confronts our sinful desires, pride and selfishness. It “violently” reorders our priorities. It reorders the way we talk, spend time and money, how we relate to our enemies, pursue comfort, success and honor, and express our sexuality. Spiritual violence speaks of holy intensity in meekness and in loving God and people. It disrupts our life, and often the lives of those around us. It disrupts the status quo that we have grown accustomed to. We declare war on our sin and a religious spirit. This has a dramatic or violent impact on the devil’s kingdom and religious systems. The source of our spiritual violence is the love of God and not fear. Jesus connected spiritual violence to the lifestyle of John. Jesus set him forth as model of what greatness is in God’s sight. The measure of John’s greatness was not the number of people he impacted; it was the measure of his personal “spiritual violence” or his resolve to seek God without compromise. John is the premier example of wholeheartedness in a transitional generation. This spiritual violence is one of the, if not the, greatest need in our generation today. God suffers or requires and rewards spiritual violence. He is waiting on us to violently seek Him. He desires a people with a spiritual fervor that will lay aside everything that gets in the way of obeying and loving God with all of our heart. This does not refer to being irresponsible. We do not need to abandon our God-given responsibilities to obey God. As Bob Jones Sr. used to say, “Responsibilities never conflict.” What he meant by that is it is possible in the grace of God to fulfill everything God is calling us to. By spiritual violence, Jesus was speaking of laying aside compromise, selfish comforts, pride, fear, and religious reasoning. We must walk this out in the practical issues of real life. Everything in the Kingdom of God is walked out in time and space. Most people do not mind hearing sermons on radical obedience. What convicts and disturbs us and disrupts everything around us is whenever someone goes beyond talking about it to actually doing it – to living a life of spiritual violence that is demonstrated in the way they spend their time and their money. SERMON ON THE MOUNT: THE FASTED LIFESTYLE
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:14)
The way to live a spiritually violent lifestyle, is to walk out our wholeheartedness with God by doing the main and plain things of Scripture. It is not complicated. It is simple to understand. No one grieves the heart of God by living non-violent lives because they don’t understand what He is asking of them. It is simple to know what to do. It is, however, more difficult, to do it. Advancing in the things of God is difficult in terms of our fleshly desires and our sinful pride. It comes down to pursuing a Sermon on the Mount lifestyle or the fasted lifestyle (Mt. 5-7). This is a call to embrace godly attitudes (Mt. 5) as we give ourselves to prayer (and the Word) with fasting, giving and serving others (Mt. 6). Serving others in love naturally happens as we fellowship with believers and minister to unbelievers (Mt. 6-7). Relationship is central in all we do in the Kingdom. We have more encouragement and wisdom to walk out this lifestyle as we do it with others with the same values. There are five expressions of the fasted lifestyle set forth in Matthew 6:1-18. These include giving, serving, praying (with the Word), blessing our enemies and fasting food. In the fasted lifestyle we fast food, time, energy, money, and words. There are different forms of fasting. In these, we voluntarily embrace a “form of weakness” as we trust God to intervene on our behalf with His strength. When we fast we declare to God that we derive our life and strength from Him. Giving speaks of fasting our money or giving our financial strength to others. Serving requires that we fast our time and energy as we invest them in others. Prayer is a form of fasting related to our time and emotions. Fasting food causes weakness related to physical and emotional strength. Blessing our enemies requires that we fast our words and reputation (self-preservation and promotion). Before God, we voluntarily give up some of our strength to others in each of these five areas. For example, the time and energy “used up” in prayer is time we cannot use again to establish our name, ministry or business. It is time that we use in prayer thus, we cannot use it for recreation or entertainment. Once that time and energy is spent, we can never get it back. Thus, we, in a very real and significant way, are trusting the Lord to work on our behalf in a way that gives us that which surpasses what we could have done using that very same time to establish our cause. These five activities are foundational to the Kingdom. This is Christianity 101. These five activities reveal the pathway to going deeper in God as we look to God to release strength and increase in our lives in the places we “voluntarily offer” our natural strength to Him. We joyfully embrace a form of weakness as we invest our strength in a Kingdom way. As essential as these activities are however, they are no substitute for pursuing 100-fold obedience. I have spoken with many believers who seek to bargain with God, promising to give more money or to fast and pray more to prove their sincerity while living in immorality or cheating on a financial deal. It will not work. These Sermon-on-the-Mount dynamics will only work in the life of one who is seeking to live in 100-fold obedience to the Lord in every area of his or her life. The fasted lifestyle is a long term lifestyle that is committed to these five expressions of fasting. Going deep in God will inevitably happen as we stay consistent. In this life, we never graduate from these, to go on to the “deeper things” of God. These are the deep things of God. The pathway to wholeheartedness with God is not complex nor confusing. Its simplicity is it’s greatest stumbling block. Some assume that it is an elusive life filled with secret principles. Some would seek a complicated commandment that only a few understood so they feel superior to others. HUNGERING FOR ALL THAT GOD WILL GIVE US
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)
Jesus releases more of His power and Presence to us in direct correlation to the measure of our hunger for Him. Spiritual hunger comes as we get a vision to have everything that God will give the human spirit on this side of eternity. We want everything that He will give. The book of Acts is not the ceiling. I believe that you and I are in the generation in which God will pour out the fullness of His Spirit. As long as the church is content without paralytics walking and the blind not seeing, then she will go without it. One of the most foundational truths in the Christian walk is this: What you are willing to do without, you will do without! We have spiritual hunger when we cannot live without all that God has promised. Hunger always causes us to make radical changes in our lifestyle. We alter our life to accommodate our spiritual hunger for more of God – it really is that simple.. A good way to measure the reality of our hunger, is to measure the extent to which we rearrange our life (time, money, pursuit of comfort) to pursue what we are hungry for. Let me look at your checkbook and your daytimer and I can give you a very accurate snapshot of your spiritual hunger levels. God requires us to cooperate with Him in the grace of God. This is an expression of His desire for intimate partnership with us. God will not do our part and we cannot do His part. If we do not do our part then some of the blessing that God would have given us is withheld. Our part includes making quality decisions to walk in spiritual violence or to deny ourselves (saying no to sin and pride), to feed our spirit on the Word, to ask for Divine help and intervention through prayer with fasting and to embrace godly activities (ministry, service) and relationships, etc. God’s part is to release supernatural influences on our heart (power, wisdom, desires), on our body (healing) and circumstances (provision, protection, direction) and relationships (favor). Many people today “trust” the sovereignty of God in a non-biblical way. They do this by “trusting” God to do the role that He has assigned to us. This is not truly trusting God, but rather it is living a life of presumption before Him. We cannot do God’s part and He will not do our part. Kingdom principle: if we do more (prayer with fasting) then God gives us more. This principle bothers us because it leaves us with a nagging question. When is it enough? We cannot easily measure if we are getting all that God has for us. It is better to just press into God with prayer without seeking to measure if we could pray more. Many would rather not believe that what they do or do not do makes any real difference because it makes them feel tension. IT IS SUPPOSED TO CREATE TENSION. We must know that this tension usually remains unresolved in our lives. Let me say here that we do not earn God’s blessings by our prayers. However, prayer is God’s chosen way that enables us to more fully cooperate with Him in releasing more blessing. Some misapply the truth that if God wants something that He will do it. This is true in some of the broad strokes of how He leads history. However, there are many, many things that God will not give us until we walk it out practically with faith and obedience. Significantly, God wants all to be saved but it does not happen because God will not violate our free will in our salvation. He is not willing that any should perish, but rather to come to repentance and salvation (2 Pet. 3:8-9). TAKE HEED TO WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS GOD’S HIGHEST FOR YOUR LIFE
24 And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear (believe about what God will give you): with the measure you use (apply to your life), it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. (Mark 4:24)
Take heed (be careful) in what you hear or in what you believe is God’s measure of blessing for your heart. In other words, be careful in determining what you contend for in your experience in God. Most are too easily satisfied with too small a measure of experience in God. Why do we need to be so careful to what we “hear” or buy into about our life vision? Because with the same measure that we use or apply to our lives, it will be measured back to us from God’s hand. To those who “hear” what it is that God desires to give them, then more will be given to them from God. Therefore, we must be careful to want we hear or believe about the measure of what God will give our heart. To believe for too small a measure will lead to just that – a small measure. We want God’s power on our heart leading us into deeper intimacy with Him. Do you hear this? Most buy into a vision that is far too small! God will give great things to our hearts in this age. The measure of our expectation or faith significantly impacts what we tenaciously pursue in God. SEEKING THE FULLNESS OF GRACE: UNDERSTANDING TWO SPHERES OF GRACE
2 We have obtained our introduction….into this grace in which we stand… (Rom. 5:2 NAS)
6 But he gives more grace…“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6)
6 He gives a greater grace…God…gives grace to the humble… (Jas 4:6, NAS)
God’s mercy provides us with forgiveness. His grace enables or empowers us (1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 12:9). We receive an introduction into God’s grace at the new birth. It is not fullness, it is but the introduction. To say it another way, it is not the house, it is the doorway into the house. It enables us to experience the introductory elements of the Kingdom. God offers greater measures of grace for those who persistently seek God with all their heart. We do not earn or deserve either one. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony…and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:33)
17 …those who receive the abundance of grace… reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17)
12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service…14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed…(1 Timothy 1:12-14) 2 that you should remember…the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles…grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…(2 Peter 3:2, 18)
The basis for our “introduction to grace” is need (i.e. forgiveness). God automatically gives this out of His compassion. We automatically receive it passively without doing much to cooperate. The basis for the “fullness of grace” is hunger (i.e., revival). We aggressively take it out of our desperate hunger. The fullness of grace is not passively received, but aggressively taken. JESUS WOOS US WITH THE WEDDING SONG AND WARNS US WITH THE DIRGE
16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, 17 “ ‘We played the flute (wedding song) for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn (lament).’ (Matthew 11:16-17)
Jesus rebuked His generation, telling them that neither the wooing of God’s love nor the warnings of judgment moved them. God raises up both messages. Jesus is our Bridegroom, King and Judge. We live in the paradox of the dance of love and the funeral dirge of God’s End-Time judgments. These represent the two sides of wholeheartedness. There is a paradox of being lovesick with God yet carrying His burden of imminent judgment. On one side we rejoice and on the other side we enter into the sufferings of Christ. We weep with great sorrow and yet we dance with great joy. It is not either / or, it is both / and. 32 And behold, you (Ezekiel) are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. (Ezekiel 33:32)
12 At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill (judgment).’ (Zephaniah 1:12)
9 …And he (angel) said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” 10 And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. 11 And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” (Revelation 10:9-11)
BEARING REPROACH FOR THE FASTED LIFESTYLE
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds (what it produces).” (Matthew 11:18-19)
35 He (John) was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. (John 5:35)
John lived the fasted lifestyle. He taught his disciples to pray which required fasting their time (Luke 11:1), to give money and telling them that if they had two tunics or extra food to give to those who had none (Luke 3:11) and to fast food (Mt. 9:14). Israel briefly rejoiced in John’s message then concluded he was demonized and dangerous. David experienced this same type of reproach for his spiritual intensity with God. 7 For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach…8 I have become a stranger to my brothers…9 For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. 10 When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach. 11 …I became a byword to them. 12 I am the talk of those who sit in the gate (those in the gate speak against me – NKJ)… (Psalm 69:7-12)
God will vindicate John and condemn those who rejected him on the judgment day. The wisdom of John’s fasted lifestyle will be openly displayed for all to see in eternity. The same is true of you and I, Beloved. If we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church, and respond by living radical lifestyles of spiritual, violent hunger, the fruit in our lives, and in the lives of those around us will be openly displayed on that day for all to see. I am hungry. How about you?
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