Given at "Friday Fire", St Marks Anglican Church, Northbridge, Sydney, on Fri 23rd June, 1995. Friday Fire is a meeting held fortnightly for those interested in finding out about the "Toronto Blessing", or who just want more!
Prophecy: (Paul Davies) I believe God wants us to go back over several themes - the recurring themes that we've been getting understanding on. The first one was that we believe this Toronto Blessing could be a fulfilment of Ezekiel 37 - the Valley of Dry Bones. A lot of people were saying that they were very dry and this is a refreshing. Probably the most consistent theme has been along the idea of Grace versus Law, and when Rob (Holmes) was sharing about the trees before, God just said the tree that he's offering now, and the fruit he's offering now is the fruit of the tree of Life. And if you've been around when we've been talking about Grace, you'll know that the major conflict in the Bible, all the way through, its... it's not God versus Satan - Satan hardly rates a mention. It's not even Good versus Evil - it's Grace versus Law. Right from the Garden of Eden where you have the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, representing the Law; and the Tree of Life, representing God's Grace. And what really surprised me the other week. I was sitting in church and reading backwards through Isaiah. And, to read backwards through Isaiah you need to have bits coloured in, so you sort of flip back and a bit catches your eye and you go 'Ahh!". Funnily enough, I noticed something going backwards that I've never ever noticed going forwards. And that is that the book of Isaiah has these repeating cycles in it. He seems to, he seems to talk about "Well, you guys are in a really bad way - you've done something wrong", and nearly every single time its something to do with legalism. You know - "You've blown it!" And then its God's judgment, all that sort of stuff, and then its something to do with God's blessing and God's Grace coming on before them. And nearly every time it finishes with a passage that is looking forward to after the Day of the Lord, to the Blessing that comes upon people. And some of you have heard the teaching that is being put around about the "Generation of the Righteous". And I was saying to Dad the other day, I think that is a "Key" teaching - a key of the kingdom in one sense, because once you have that understanding of what God is working towards, it starts to unlock a number of other things in the Book. It just all starts falling into place. But if you look right at the beginning of Isaiah, he starts with a warning about the churches lack of..., about the people of Israel's lack of understanding and legalism. And you may remember a couple of months ago we had that word from Revelation 3:17 where Jesus says to the Church "You do not understand. You think you've got all this understanding and you've completely missed the point." Isaiah is really the book of the End Times - I mean, the whole way through you start to get this theme of the Day of the Lord, and then of course these cycles with the Generation of the Righteous - what God is going to turn the church into. And the bit that really pulled me up and started me on this was from Isaiah 28, verses 9-13. And what it says there is: "Who is it he is trying to reach? To whom is he explaining his message? To children weaned from their milk, to those just taken from the breast?" And one of the things with the Generation of the Righteous - its going to be something.... You know how you've got to accept the Kingdom of God like a child? Right! It's talking about, not people who've got a whole heap of human wisdom, and who've been trained in the ways of the world so that they don't have a clue what God's doing anymore. God's just going to do it, and it's going to be an obvious act of Grace. "For it is: Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there." Now if that's not talking about legalism, I don't know what is, and is that not highlighting what we've experienced in the church, especially in the last 20 or so years. You know, "a little here, a little there". Its been a real struggle. "Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people," (the Gentiles), " to whom he said, 'This is the resting place, let the weary rest'; and, 'This is the place of repose'-- but they would not listen." God is setting his Grace out. He's saying: "This is a resting place. This is a refreshing. This is something that's free for you to take." But there are still people who won't listen, and I think it's really important that we are careful in how we treat the Grace of God, and, some of the Grace of God is not easy to handle - especially the fact that God is using fairly young, untrained people, some of whom've never been to Theological college, and that he's starting to bring new revelation. And a lot of people are finding that very difficult to deal with, because we've been so trained in sort of, human wisdom methods of interpreting the Book. And I think it's really important that we have this attitude of repentance, and say "Okay God. You show me. You teach me." For after all, we worship the Living Word, not the written Word.
John Davies: Thanks Paul. Indeed, we've found out a lot on this issue of grace, and many people we've prayed for have found it so hard just to receive what God is giving, because they've been programmed that they've got to do it, they've got to earn it, they've got to somehow or other make some contribution. And you see people, you go to pray for them, and they're flat out, they're praying in tongues and working hard to make it happen, and its just Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace - freely given.
Now, how many of you saw the 60 minutes program last Sunday? Ahh, not as many as I thought may have. We had great trepidation as to whether it was right to have them come into our church, but God overruled in a number of ways. Firstly, it was a long weekend, and we discovered during the week that half our congregation was going to be away, and we looked at the prospect of a beautiful scene of a half-empty, quarter-empty church, and then on the day God brought a whole lot of visitors. And then the lady, Alex Hodgkinson, who was producing the program, had wanted to come to Friday Night, but then I wasn't here, so she couldn't. And so she said, "Well, can we come to Sunday?", and I said "Well Sunday is a fairly, umm ... fairly sedate - not like Friday nights."
And she said: "Well, can you put a little Toronto meeting on at the end?".... And I said "Well no we don't - we don't turn things on just like that." I said, "We do have a time of ministry, but ahh, over the past little while - few weeks the ministry time has been fairly quiet." Well, the day they were there, people queued up for ministry, and God came in power. And so God turned it on for them.
And there was one little awesome, little ironic touch of God. There was one particular lady there who had just that very morning flown in from Toronto. She had not had any contact with this over there, came to our church, the Lord blessed her, she went to the (John Arnott) conference, got even more blessed, and flew back to Toronto on the Saturday to "take the fire back". So, ahh, God's got a sense of humour.
Okay, tonight I want to give you some - a little bit more solid teaching, cause one or two folk have said to me: "Well the bishop says its adrenalin and somebody else says its the devil, ahh, you know, what... where do we stand?", and I just want to give you some solid foundation from the Word of God.
Father, I just ask for your Holy Spirit to guide and direct us now, and that you will teach us your truth, and that you'll open our hearts and minds to receive it. And that you'll keep us Lord from being turned aside by anything that would distract us or distort us, and Lord just reveal your clear and plain truth that we may live by it and be blessed by it, for Jesus sake, Amen.
Now John, is this recording by the way? It is? Good!
Now we who are Anglicans pray a particular prayer fairly often, and I guess other people do too, and it sort of starts off "Our Father, who is in Heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom Come..." And when we say "Your Kingdom Come", what exactly are we asking for? I wonder if we've ever stopped to think about that. Well, perhaps the pat answer is: we're asking for God's kingly rule - we're asking for God to be King in our world and in our lives.
But there's far more than that, because the concept and understanding of the Kingdom of God is fundamental to the preaching of Jesus, and in the preaching of the Apostles. It's fundamental to understanding the nature of the Gospels, and it gives, I believe, a proper perspective on what we are seeing today. We are seeing, in my opinion, manifestations of the Kingdom of God. Let me spell that out a bit more clearly.
The greatest opposition to what is happening seems to be coming from those who see themselves committed to the gospel and the truth of God's word - those who are absolutely, critically committed to "getting it right", and to being "biblical" and to being "gospel-centred." And they say that, you know: "The gospel's not at the heart of this - it's distracting people from the gospel, and therefore, it can't be right."
But I believe that ahh, what they are standing on and ahh, working from is only a part of the gospel, and only a part of God's word. To quote Jesus words when he was talking to the Sadducees: "They know neither the power nor the Word of God." What is the Gospel?
Well the standard answer is ahh, sort of the nutshell package that - its the message that Jesus lived and did good, Jesus was crucified, Jesus rose from the dead, and as a result of that forgiveness and new life are available to those who put their faith and trust in Jesus. Now that is true - its absolutely fundamental. At the heart of the gospel message - at the heart of God's plan and purpose from the beginning of time to the end of time, is the historical fact of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Everything is focused on that, and there can be no true gospel without that, there can be no Christianity without that - its a fundamental focus.
When the Apostles went out to preach they proclaimed Jesus and the resurrection. When Paul went to Corinth he said "I was determined to know nothing else but Jesus, and him crucified". And that is absolutely central, but its not the whole picture, and to focus just on that to the exclusion of the rest of the gospel as the Bible portrays it, is in fact to get that central message distorted, because the gospel is bigger than that neat summary. You see, Jesus was preaching the Gospel from the very beginning of his ministry. Long before he died and rose again the scripture says that - Jesus preached the gospel. Mark 1:15, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he begins to preach and says: "The time has come. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent, and believe the gospel." Now, your Bible will probably say "Good News", but the word is "Uengelion" - the Greek word for the gospel. You find in Matthew 4:23, an early description of Jesus' ministry, that "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news or the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people."
Some time later in Jesus' ministry, Matthew 9:35, we read "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel, or the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness." Jesus' gospel was the gospel of the Kingdom - not just that little... key phrase, if you like, of Jesus' life, death and resurrection - it was the Kingdom message. The Kingdom of God was Jesus' constant theme. He taught his disciples to pray for it - we just quoted it before. He taught his disciples to pray "Your Kingdom Come" - to pray the God's Kingdom might come! He sent his disciples out to proclaim it. In Luke 9:2, we read: "He sent them out to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Jesus' last teaching focused on the Kingdom. We find in Acts 1:3, "After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days, and spoke about the Kingdom of God." The last 40 days that Jesus was with his disciples before he ascended into heaven, the theme of his teaching was the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God was also the theme of the Apostles teaching. For example, in Acts 12, when Phillip went down to Samaria and began that fantastic mission, we read that "when they believed Phillip, as he preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised - both men and women." Later, in Acts 9:8, we read that Paul "entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively...." about the gospel? No, about "the Kingdom of God." That was the theme of his persuasive argument, his preaching and teaching.
In Acts 20:25, when Paul is summing up his ministry to the Ephesian elders, he says: "Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the Kingdom, will ever see me again." Acts 28:31, at the very end of his ministry in Rome as a prisoner we read that "boldly and without hindrance, he preached the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ."
Now the point that I'm labouring, because I want to make it very plain, very clear - that the gospel is much more than "Christ died for your sins." It is that, but it is bigger than that. The gospel is the gospel of the Kingdom - the message that Christ is King. Now he is established as King through his death and resurrection - he triumphed over the devil and all his works at... through his death and resurrection. He triumphed over death through his death and resurrection. He won forgiveness of sins through his through his death and resurrection. Everything focuses back on that, but the gospel if you like is this whole package of the message of the kingdom, and its within that package, I believe, that we have an understanding of what is happening now. Because there is more! In the midst of this crazy, mixed-up world, God is on His throne! But there is more - to quote a certain TV salesman. The gospel of the kingdom is not just talk!
You see, I was born... born anew and raised and bred an evangelical to my inner core. I am one who is committed to the gospel. But the gospel so often has been a message - something you speak. It's a content of words, and you get out your little booklet and its all set out in words. The gospel of the Kingdom is not just talk - it is a demonstration of power! This is the troublesome spot, this is what upsets people. There's a song by Graham Kendrick "Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is in you", and I remember, at a meeting on the North Shore some weeks back - one of our meetings to pray for revival, we sang that song, and afterwards when a group of clergy were talking about the meeting - about how it went, one evangelical clergyman from another denomination, aah, got quite upset, and he said: "I don't like the verse of that song you sang. It talks about 'building a kingdom of power, not of words'". It upset him, but you see - he hadn't read his Bible, because 1 Corinthians 4:20, Paul says: "The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power."The kingdom of God is not words - it is power.
Now this is a fundamental issue, because so much evangelical Christianity is focused on words. So many of our churches are wordfests, and I know of clergy who boast over the fact that their whole service is geared around the sermon. Everything is focused on the sermon - that is the heart and essence of the gathering together, when the preaching is done, and hymns and everything else is just an adjunct to the sermon. And this is part of this...mindset that focuses on words, words, words. But the kingdom of God is not a matter of words, it is power. And so Paul's own testimony, he says in 1 Corinthians 2:4 - "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power." Similarly, in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, he says "our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the holy spirit, and with deep conviction." Now don't get me wrong. Words have an important part, and wherever Paul went he preached, and reasoned and argued. But what he says is it was not just words. Words are important for communicating, but power is the essence of the kingdom.
Now the standard evangelical answer is: Well, the greatest demonstration of power is in conversion, and I've heard many people say in relation to that 1 Corinthians 2:4 passage, that when Paul says I came to you with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, was that yes, many people were converted. And the spirit's power was demonstrated in people getting converted - that is the greatest demonstration of the Spirit's power. The only problem is that the Bible doesn't say that! Nowhere can I find in the Scriptures where conversion is held up as the demonstration of the Spirit's power. It just doesn't say it. So next time one of your evangelical friends throws that one at you, say well, "That's very interesting. Can you please show me in the Bible where it is?" Because we just..., and I in my earlier days, I just swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Oh, it's quite obvious that people's conversion is the greatest demonstration of God's power. But the Bible doesn't say that!
In fact, Paul specifically says that he performed signs, wonders and miracles, in Corinth. Now you don't find that in the record in the book of Acts. But you find it, as almost a throw-away line, in 2 Corinthians 12:12, when Paul says "I did these things when I came among you." He spells it out more specifically in Romans 15: 18 and 19, when he's summing up his ministry as a whole, and he says "I won't venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, in leading the Gentiles to obey God, by what I have said and done. By the power of signs and miracles through the power of the Spirit, so from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ."
So, what he is saying, is that his proclamation of the gospel of Christ is integrally related to the demonstration of the Spirit's power in signs, wonders and miracles. All right? You cannot separate the two as far as Paul's ministry is concerned, in the way he describes it. How many clergy today, how many ministers, look to that aspect of their gospel ministry? That it is this miraculous power, rather than the power of convincing oratory, that marked the gospel from the beginning. And so we go back to Matthew. Matthew 4:23: "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news or the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people."
You see, even Jesus' preaching ministry went hand-in-hand with the demonstration of the Spirit's power. People were amazed at his teaching. They were even more amazed at the power that he manifested in their midst. Matthew 9:35, again "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel, or the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness." And then he sent his disciples out in Luke 9:2, "to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." Hand-in-hand with the message of the spoken word is the demonstration of the Spirit's power. And then, ahh, Luke 9:11 again, "he welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing."
And so we could go on and on, to demonstrate the fact that the gospel is not just a matter of words, but the demonstration of the Spirit's power. One of the reasons, I believe, that the gospel is making so little impact today, is that it has lost it's power. "Words, words, words, words, words" - to quote one certain musical - "don't talk of love - show me."
2 Timothy 3:5, talks about those in the last days who will have a form of godliness, but deny it's power, and Paul says: "have nothing to do with them." Godliness without power is not the true gospel at all, because the gospel is the demonstration of the kingdom power, and what we are seeing now I believe, is simply a new level of the power of God at work - its simply: He's turned the voltage up!
To move on through Matthew again, and ahh, those who heard me last night will have heard a bit of this already. In Matthew 12, we have an interesting encounter of Jesus with a group of Pharisees. And ahh... it begins with a group of people bringing to Jesus a demon-possessed man who was both blind and mute, and Jesus healed him so that he could both talk and see. "All the people were astonished and said: 'Could this be the Son of David?'" So you have Jesus again, ministering in power, and its not Jesus' words, but its his deeds - it's the healing of the man, that provokes a new level of faith in the people - they begin to... to look and say "is this indeed the Messiah?" It's the deeds, rather than the words, that are touching them.
But, there also are the Pharisees, and umm, I see many similarities between the Pharisees and today's Evangelicals - and I say that, like Paul, being a "Pharisee of the Pharisees" - I come from there. And ahh, the Pharisees who are utterly committed to the Truth of God, utterly committed to getting it right... and they say, they jump to conclusions and say: " 'It's only by Beelzebub, the Prince of Demons, that this fellow drives out demons.' Simple! What he's doing is not God at all - it's the devil."
Now on 60 Minutes we had three different theories put forward: those who are saying this is of God; a certain gentleman up in Brisbane - I don't know who he is - but he's quite convinced it was the devil, and ahh, our beloved bishop who felt it was adrenalin. I guess that's the three possible views - it is either from God, or its from the devil, or it's from our flesh - that's the adrenalin part. Well, the middle one didn't come up in this conversation. The Pharisees simply said it's Beelzebub. Beelzebub, is an interesting character. The name goes back to the Old Testament Ba'alzebul, which was the pagan name for the prince Ba'al - Ba'al being the pagan deity in Canaan. And Ba'alzebul - the Jews plagiarised the name, as they often do with names, and they made it Ba'alzebub - which is Lord of the Flies. And that was their term which they then applied to Satan. So when they say it's by Beelzebub, they're saying basically that yes - this power is the power of Satan.
Jesus doesn't let them get away with it - he tackles them on their logic. And so he says to them: " Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges." And he said: "Look, it's stupid. If this is Satan getting rid of his own people - he's an idiot! Well we know Satan's an idiot anyway, but I mean... it's foolish to say this is Satan, because Satan doesn't do that sort of thing. And when we look at what's happening now, people are loving Jesus more! People are reading their Bibles more! Now if that's the Devil doing it, he's an idiot. In fact I heard one lovely story from the 60 Minutes program.
The brother of my other son's friend, was apparently doing drugs, and ahh, somewhat a rebel. He saw the 60 Minutes program, was so impressed, he went along to Waterloo on Tuesday night and gave his heart to Jesus.
Now, I can't find either the devil or adrenalin as a satisfactory answer for that. It seems to me its only God who can bring people to himself. So by pure logic we're left with only one answer. But then Jesus goes on, umm... later on, to talk about fruit. He says in verse 33: "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good. Make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad. For a tree is recognised by its fruit."
And ultimately, that is how we must judge what is happening - by its fruit, and we've already talked about the fact that some fruit on the outside may not appear very attractive, but beneath the surface we find that this is very nice fruit. Now I have not yet found anything, in the months that we've been involved, in what we saw in Toronto, in what we've seen happening here. I have not seen anybody whose lives have been spoilt, whose marriages have been harmed, whose relationship have worsened. I've only ever seen good fruit. I've seen many people released of deep inner pain. I've seen many people find a new joy. I've seen beautiful scenes of... ahh...several ladies I've prayed for, and they said: "I've never been allowed to play." And God lets them out, and they laugh, and they just have a ball. That's good fruit, as I see it. And I've seen many people as we asked before, who are reading their Bibles more fervently, and are falling in love with Jesus again. By their fruit you will know it.
But Jesus goes on, and he says: "He who is not with me" in verse 30. "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." You see, there's no middle ground in this. When the power of God comes, we have to make up our mind, we cannot sit on the fence - that's the awesome part. Jesus actually said in verse 28: "If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you." You see, that's the ultimate conclusion. You rule out the devil, you rule out adrenalin - all you've got left is God! Right! Now if this is God, what are we going to do with him? Or what's he going to do with us? You see, this is where we come back to the kingdom. Jesus says: "If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out the demon's, the Kingdom of God is here." The Kingdom of God is here, and you can't sit on the fence. "He who is not with me, scatters."
A certain radio announcer, well... he said it publicly - its Gordon Moyes, ahh.. on a radio interview several months back. he said "Well..." he said, "I'm a bit like Gamaliel in this." He said "Gamaliel... ahh, gave the council with the Apostles, and he said 'Well, we'd better not oppose it - it might be of God. If it's of God, then we don't want to oppose it, and even if we do oppose it we can't stop it. If it's not of God it'll just die out, and we'll just sort of stand back and watch.'" And that sounds to be a fairly reasonable way of handling it. The problem is with Gamaliel - He missed it! It passed him by, because in the end you cannot sit on the fence. If the Kingdom of God is here, we have to respond to that, and that's of course why some many want to dismiss it as either God or adrenalin - as either the Devil or adrenalin, because if you can dismiss it like that you don't have to come to terms with it. You don't have to come to the conclusion that perhaps God is here doing something that's not in my garden - it's not in my patch. It's not in the way I feel comfortable with. But if God's doing it, then he is God, and we have to let him be God. All right, the Kingdom of God is here! What are you going to do about it?
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