So Much More: Moving Beyond Kingdom Principles to Kingdom Power (12 page)

—J
OHN
11:38–39

Let’s bring this to present-day reality. Your brother is sick and dying in the hospital. You ask Jesus to come and heal him but He doesn’t show up. You have the funeral and He doesn’t show up for the funeral either. Now it’s four days later and your brother is already buried at the local cemetery and Jesus finally shows up and says, “Let’s go dig him up.” It would be shocking and morbid. I love the King James Version of this passage. It simply says, “He stinketh!” That says it all!

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” [Something in Jesus words must have given Martha faith to act.] So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

—J
OHN
11:40–44

Jesus actually proved He had power over life and death as He brought Lazarus back to life. What a demonstration that the kingdom of God was at hand! Satan’s power and authority over death can’t stop the invasion of the kingdom of God!

Jesus proved this ultimately through His own resurrection. The grave could not hold Him. Lazarus was resurrected only to die again some day. But Jesus was resurrected by the power of God proving once and for all that the kingdom of God had invaded the kingdom of Satan by taking authority over death. So every time Jesus took authority over demons, every time Jesus took authority over disease, every time He took authority over death, it was a demonstration that the kingdom of God was at hand.

There’s an interesting passage recorded in Luke’s gospel where John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus a question. John, as we have already seen, came preaching the message of the kingdom. He had already baptized Jesus and heard the voice of God declare, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17,
NKJV
). He had identified Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But now John found himself in prison, and it didn’t seem like the kingdom was advancing the way that he understood the kingdom should advance. Here’s the question, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:19) He was saying that he thought Jesus was the Messiah who came to usher in the kingdom, but now he wasn’t so sure.

John’s disciples went to Jesus to ask the question on John’s behalf. Now when they arrived, they undoubtedly had to wait to even get to close to Jesus because crowds were following Him, pressing up against Him, wanting Jesus to heal their sick and deliver their demon-oppressed people. So by the time they actually got to Jesus, more than likely they had stood in amazement witnessing Jesus perform some incredible miracles. Finally, they got to Jesus and they asked John’s question, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” I love Jesus’ response: “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (v. 22).

When they returned to John, I’m sure they reported all these things that they had seen along with the message Jesus communicated. Jesus’ response is very important because He clearly connected the miraculous things He did with a demonstration of the kingdom.

In the Old Testament the prophet Isaiah gave many prophecies concerning the Messiah, the King who was to come to usher in the kingdom. He gave us the portraits of the Messiah as a suffering servant (chapter 53), but Isaiah also gave general prophecies about the Messianic era and what would happen when the King arrived to usher in the kingdom. Those statements tie right in with Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples. Jesus told the disciples, “Go back and report to John that the blind receive sight and the deaf hear.” Isaiah prophesied, “In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see” (29:18).

Jesus said, “The lame walk.” Isaiah prophesied the lame leap like a deer (35:6).

Jesus said, “The dead are being raised.” Isaiah prophesied when the king, the Messiah arrived, “Your dead will live, L
ORD
; their bodies will rise —let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy—your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead” (26:19).

Jesus said, “The good news is being preached to the poor.” Isaiah prophesied that when the Messiah came that these words would be true of Him: “The Spirit of the Sovereign L
ORD
is on me, because the L
ORD
has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor” (61:1).

Jesus was clearly connecting the works that He did to the prophecies of Isaiah concerning the Messiah. He was communicating to John that He was the Messiah, the King, of whom Isaiah had spoken and He had come to usher in the kingdom of God to earth.

When it comes to raising the dead, you may wonder, “What does this have to do with the kingdom ministry we are to be involved in today?” Again, it is important to recognize that the kingdom is the rule of God on earth today. It is not only for today, but also for tomorrow. We live in the presence of the future. The kingdom is here now in its present form, but it is not in its complete form—yet. It will come in its fullness when Christ returns. But in Jesus’ day as well as today, we can live in the kingdom now, today, although not in its complete form.

The ministry that demonstrates the kingdom must also accompany the message of the kingdom. Part of that ministry is not only the casting out of demons and healing the sick, but it is also the ministry of raising the dead. Again for most us who have been raised in a Western culture, we have a very scientific worldview of life. The idea of bringing the dead back to life again is so foreign to most of us because we see death as an irreversible process. Scientifically we would have great difficulty in demonstrating or arguing for anything different because we know that once you are dead you are dead. Yet here we see Jesus intervene and mess up all of our logical, scientific thinking by bringing someone back to life who was dead for four days! We have forgotten that Hebrews 2 tells us that Jesus came to “break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is the devil” (v. 14). The enemy held power over death; but when Jesus came to reintroduce the kingdom, He also destroyed the enemy’s power over death.

Jesus wasn’t the only one who raised people from the dead; but His raising of the dead established a pattern, a model if you will, that was then used by the apostles during their ministry to raise the dead. They learned to raise the dead by being with Jesus when He raised the dead.

You may wonder if we can still raise the dead today. My understanding is that both the model Jesus demonstrated for us and the mandate Jesus gave us to raise the dead has not changed. It is part of the kingdom! I believe there are times that any believer operating in kingdom power and authority may be called upon to exercise that power and authority over death. I have never personally raised the dead, but I refuse to allow my belief in what God wants to do or has the power to do through me at any given time to be limited by my personal experience. I believe it is clear in the context of kingdom warfare that there are times God may reverse what we consider irreversible and bring the dead back to life!

A friend of mine has personally experienced the raising of the dead. My friend Jim was in Africa preaching at a crusade. After the crusade they met at the home of one of the local pastors to try to figure out how to carry on the momentum from the crusade. As they were meeting, there was a knock on the door. Immediately the pastors were gripped with fear because this kind of meeting was illegal. When they opened the door, a man walked in carrying the dead body of his daughter in his arms. He carried with him a slip of paper with the pastor’s address. He said, “The Holy Spirit gave me this address and said to bring my daughter here.” He had carried her for four days from an outlying village through the hot African sun.

They told him to lay the girl’s body on the huge coffee table in the middle of the living room. The pastors weren’t really sure what to do, so they decided to pray in tongues. After about fifteen to twenty minutes of prayer, the girl’s eyes fluttered and she sat up completely alive. All the skin on her body that had deteriorated during the trip in the hot son was instantly healed. The pastors were all amazed. The girl’s dad sat in the corner of the room crying. The girl simply wanted to know, “Who are all these people, and why is my dad crying?”

One of the men left to drive the girl and her father back to their village. About thirty minutes later there was another knock on the door. They wondered if the pastor had experienced car trouble or something else was wrong. They answered the door and found two men carrying a homemade stretcher with the dead body of the son of one of the men. They proceeded to tell the pastors that the boy had been shot three days earlier. The Holy Spirit had spoken to his father and told him to get the body out of the morgue and go to this address. They prayed over the boy’s body and after a time the body began to vibrate on the table. Eventually he woke up and came to life with the bullet hole still gaping open there in his chest. The amazing thing was the boy’s father had so much faith that he had brought clothes for the boy to wear home. Now that’s the kingdom!

Chapter 7
BORN AGAIN INTO THE KINGDOM

M
ARK FOUND HIMSELF
in a cold dark basement. He had been alone in this basement for over thirty-five hours, high on crack cocaine. His life was spiraling out of control. He found himself crawling on the ground in search of another elusive rock of crack cocaine that he might possibly have dropped during the last thirty hours. He knew the drugs were gone, that the Joneses had arrived, and now it was just about time to experience hell.

In that moment, a thought came to him, “Maybe I need help. Man, do I need help. Wow, do I need help!” Filled with helplessness and frustration and not knowing where else to turn, he pounded his fist into the ground and said, “God, I need help!”

At that moment, Mark describes how two of the gentlest hands he had ever felt grabbed his shoulders and raised him up off the ground while he heard the voice of God quietly whisper, “My son, I have been waiting for you to ask for My help, but I had to have you ask before I could help you. It is time for you to call your brother and check into rehab. It’s time to start your new life.”

Mark spent 30 days in treatment becoming increasingly aware over time of the many battles he would have to face in order to recover. He had fought off past drug addiction successfully and stayed clean and sober from November 1989 until November 2005. He sought a higher power but did not know the God of the Bible. He found himself confused about life in general and spiritually completely dead.

In November 2005 Mark received a phone call from a friend inviting him to go to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes golf trip to Houston, Texas. Although skeptical, he accepted the invitation because the friend told him if he went he would send some remodeling business to his construction company.

Mark enjoyed playing golf and even getting to know some of the other guys. He wasn’t quite sure what to think of this “cult of Christianity,” as he liked to call it; and even though he returned home very confused, he knew something was stirring inside of him.

Four months later the friend who had invited him fulfilled his promise and was blessing Mark’s construction company with numerous jobs. However, that was not the only remodeling business this friend had in mind. He was praying that God would remodel Mark’s life.

Two weeks before Easter in March 2006, Mark sat with this friend at his house and asked him, “Are you a born again Christian?” When his friend said he was, Mark proceeded to ask him what kind of cult Christianity was. His friend sighed and assured him that this was not a cult at all and that he had been born again by trusting Jesus Christ as His Savior and Lord. He told him how he believed Jesus had died on the cross to pay the penalty for his sins and how three days later He rose from the dead and that through faith in Him we can be born again.

Mark looked at his friend dumbfounded and said, “That’s it? That’s all there is to it? Well, I believe that!” His friend responded, “Mark, that’s the other part of this truth, you have to believe it with all your heart. When you do you are born again, a party begins in heaven in your honor as the words are believed in your heart and spoken from your mouth.” That day Mark trusted Jesus with all his heart and surrendered his life to Christ. Mark and his friend embraced, excited about his new life in Christ and thinking about the party going on in heaven at that moment.