How Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Peter Obeyed the Gospel of the Kingdom (Part 2)

Simon Peter stands up and clears his throat. He says, now this morning, all the people are sitting there really early. What would you like to hear about? Three thousand people are sitting out there. You’re one of them. Don’t anybody say it. Just think about it for a moment. What would you like to hear about? What would you like to hear about?

Alright, Simon Peter says to Andrew, Andrew, you stand right over there, and we’re going to unroll this chart here. This morning we’re going to begin the prophecies of the book of Ezekiel. If he had done that, what would the 3,000 have done? They would have stoned him. The Bible says that we need to know all these things, so we’re going to study the book of Daniel and the book of Ezekiel. At best, at safest, they would have walked out on him.

What did those 3,000 people need? What did they…want? What did they get? You know, there is only one thing that Simon Peter could have dared to talk about, both to fulfill their desire and… what would you have talked about if you had been Simon Peter? What on earth would you have talked about? If we could put you in a time machine, send you back there, and you came back after three years, what would you talk about? We’d never shut you up. What would you talk about?

You would have talked about what it was like living constantly with the Lord Jesus Christ. What did they do on the day after Pentecost? What did they do? They junked it all, and on Tuesday morning, what did they begin to gain? The Lord Jesus. When they got up in the morning, people surrounded them who wanted the Lord. And when they went to bed at night, people surrounded them who wanted the Lord. When they went to the meetings early in the morning, they heard a brother describe what it was like to be with the Lord.

Now, I come to my point, and I have not gotten off the subject of the Lord’s love and the Lord’s bride. What did Jesus Christ do to attain His Sonship? He gave up everything. Obedience to the Father, even to the death on the cross. Now you tell me, please, what happened on the day of Pentecost? What happened the day of Pentecost? You can say it in three or four words: the church was born, and what is the church? The bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I come back to my other question: who’s the first citizen of the kingdom of God? He is. Say it again, please, everyone. Who is the second citizen? Say it – His wife. I’ve got news for you: she was born giving up everything just like He was. Her history runs parallel with His. Her history is absolutely parallel with the Lord’s. Sam, you asked me a question the other day. How important are these next 15 days? Will you tell the brothers what I told you? I said it is possible that the course of church history can be changed by the next 15 days.

Jesus Christ gave up everything of the kingdom of heaven. He was the greatest loser of all time. He lost all. He emerged as a man, owning not only the kingdom of heaven but the earth too, so he might have the kingdom of God and rule over both. But he emerged having given up everything, and he walked the earth looking for a bride He could love. He died for her, and she came out of His side, and she was like Him. Bone of his bone and spirit of His Spirit. She literally got her spirit from His Spirit.

Jesus, your Lord, lived on this earth, and He had certain experiences. Now He is after a wife, and He wants her to have the same experience. What must be her first experience? The abandonment of all things. To do what? To gain the knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ.

Well, what is the knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ? What is Jesus Christ, anyhow? I’m going to tell you what Jesus Christ is. I’m going to give you a definition, the like of which you’ve never heard. It might not even impress you.

Was there a Jesus Christ before “A.D.”? Well, you say, I don’t know. Yes or no? The answer is no. There wasn’t…yeah, there was, but no, there wasn’t. When you gain him, what have you gained? You have gained a man who was also God, who lived constantly by his Father for 33 years, who began it by giving up everything. Do you realize he had to give up the kingdom of heaven…may I say the kingdom of God… to gain God as a man?

I’m going to repeat that. You’ve got to be impressed. He Himself was God, but when He became a man, He had to give up his heavenly royalty to gain God in His Manhood. He could not become a man and hold on to His Godship. He had to give it up in order to gain God again.

Well, you’re not impressed, but you ought to be…for this reason. You will not gain your divinity until you’ve lost everything. You will duplicate His first experience, but praise the Lord, sisters and brothers, in doing so, you gain the privilege of duplicating His second experience. Are you clear on what his second experience was? If not, replay the tape. You can hear it.