Life of Christ #10 – When Doctrine Gets in the Way of Knowing Christ

Well, I’m going to tell you what I believe, and I really believe I’m correct. This has taken me a lifetime to present to you, and if anyone else has ever taught this, I’ve never read it. It may be in every book in the world. I never studied this from a commentary viewpoint. It’s one of those things I held in my heart and just turned over and over and over. This is my present feeling.

There is a three-year period in spiritual history that doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s not old. It’s not new. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ’s three-year ministry. During those three years, nobody has the indwelling Christ in them. Nobody actually gets saved during those three years. Now, a lot of our evangelistic messages come out of it: the woman at the well, the woman with the issue of blood, the dumb man who threw off his cloak and ran to Jesus. There are sermon outlines and all that. You better believe there are. Nicodemus, Zacchaeus. You can get saved by hearing messages preached on that. But those people did not actually have the redemptive washing of the blood of Jesus Christ and an indwelling Christ coming into them.

What did they have? I don’t know. Maybe they had all of that. Maybe they did, and we just don’t know it. It’s just a three-year period that doesn’t make much sense when you try to deal with it theologically. Well, of course, this raises the question of how Old Testament Christians get saved. The fact of the matter is that the cross is outside of time. The cross is completely outside of being affected by or limited by time and space. You can get saved anywhere, at any time, under any conditions, perhaps old and new.

Nonetheless, during the ministry of Jesus Christ, you’re very locked into time, because here He is discussing the cross, talking about His resurrection. There is anticipation. A kingdom is going to come now. The kingdom comes. Well, it probably comes at Pentecost. That kingdom has always been; it’s been in the heavenlies, but it extended its boundaries on the day of Pentecost. There’s no longer the kingdom of the heavenlies; it’s the kingdom of the heavenlies, and the kingdom has moved to earth, and now it’s the kingdom of God that covers both. So now you folks know what I believe about the kingdom. I’m not a dispensationalist. Right before the cross and resurrection, if a man wants to get saved and get into the kingdom of God, how does he get there? He does it by being very aggressive. He makes a real commitment to Christ.

This brings up the other ingredient. At this moment, John and Jesus are both very controversial. John is a very controversial figure, and Jesus is becoming one. You can get in trouble, and you can be condemned and criticized for following John. John had a demon. Are you following John? I tell you, sir, be careful. That man has a demon. Those of you who are following him are following Beelzebub. Oh, yesterday I was out there in the desert, and there were 10,000 people out there following Lucifer. Well, if you spread that around to anybody, you’ll lose a few followers here and there. You have to stand up against that, and you have to believe in the absence of a cross. I was about to say in the presence of a cross that’s absent. There is no cross. There is no resurrection, and people are pushing and pressing their way into the kingdom of God.

If I were going to try to imagine this, I would imagine it this way. I would imagine a dear little woman who heard John, really believed him, repented, and really knew forgiveness. By the way, I’d like to say there’s a little difference between repentance and legalistic righteousness. I know you’ve probably never thought about this, but a man who’s trying not to sin in daily living, where he won’t sin, is not the same as a person who repents of his sin. He gets cleansed. There is joy. There is peace. He has touched his God. Something in his life changes. He goes back and sins again, but something’s changed. Whereas the legalism is: “I will not sin, I will not sin, I will not sin.” And it goes on, and there’s never a touch with God. That man who’s not going to sin needs so much to repent and needs so much to touch God, because in his determination not to sin, he lives without ever repenting. He is a poor candidate for repentance.

This madman came along, and he rebuked the soldiers, the tax collectors, the adulterous women, and the Pharisees. He was supposed to stop before he did that (the Pharisees). It’s okay to rebuke the soldier who takes people’s cloaks and makes them carry his baggage for a mile, because Roman law allowed it; the tax collector, the dirty thieves, and the adulterous woman. “You Pharisees! You snakes! You vipers!” Who told you to repent? God didn’t, and I didn’t. How insulting can you get? So he made many enemies, and if you were going to follow this demon-possessed man, you were going to run up against opposition.

This woman went through all that and still repented, had a touch with God. Then she heard Jesus, and she wept. She believed He was the Messiah. Then one day she heard that He was crucified, and she was stunned and horrified, and she was disillusioned and did not know what to do in her—say, but something in her still held out. And then the story came back to her little village. “Have you heard? There’s a rumor that He’s risen from the dead.” She raises her hands and says, “Blessed be God.” And she is saved…by faith; she’s already exercised it three years before. Perhaps at that moment, the Holy Spirit comes into her.

Now that’s a supposition, brothers. If that be correct, here is a woman who took the kingdom violently—took it at a time when it wasn’t to be taken, took it at a time that was not seasonal. The season is Pentecost and thereafter. Men and women took it joyfully, and they took it violently. They took it out of season. They grasped it and would not let go, and I think that’s what this passage means. But I will promise you I will never keep you out of the fellowship and out of my fellowship if you believe something else. That’s the best that I understand it to mean: that violent men take the kingdom violently and joyfully. Speaks of a three-year period.

Now, you must know that John the Baptist never had the experience that little woman I just described had. Do you understand? He died before the crucifixion. He died before the resurrection. I assume that anybody who died during those three-year periods who repented under John, believed in Jesus, gets classified with John the Baptist. They never saw the kingdom. Their spirits were never brought into unseen realms while they were on this earth… while they were on this earth. Who knows what happens after that, because the cross is effective in both directions, past and future, but perhaps that all of those glorious things had to take place after their death. Whereas the little lady lived long enough to say, “Bless God,” when she heard the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, she belonged to a new covenant and a new age. It’s almost like John stands in that three-year vacuum, and he’s part of this and part of that, but he himself did not, in time, in space, enter the kingdom of God.

“Well, Gene, what is the kingdom of God?” Well, for you and me, it’s the church. The church is a colony from heaven. It is part of the heavens now on this planet. It’s a village that got put on the wrong planet. It belongs to another planet, but it got put on this planet, and it’s where people from that other planet live while they’re on this planet.

There are many other nations and many kingdoms, but this is the kingdom of God, and it belongs to the other realm. The other realm, plus the village in this realm—you put them together—it’s no longer the kingdom of the heavenlies; it’s the kingdom of God. Until Pentecost, the kingdom was relegated to the heavens. Now it belongs to heaven and earth. Now it’s the kingdom not of the heavenlies, but of God. It didn’t just come near; it landed.