THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THE CHURCH LIFE
Message Four
Living the Kingdom Life by Taking Care of Others according to the Spirit and by Realizing God's Forgiveness
Scripture Reading: Matt. 7:1-12; 18:1-35
I. Matthew 7:1-12 concerns the principles of the kingdom people in dealing with oth ers and reveals that the heavenly ruling over the kingdom people requires that they take care of others according to the spirit—cf. Judg. 9:8-9:
A. The kingdom people, living in a humble spirit under the heavenly ruling of the king dom, always judge themselves, not others—Matt. 7:1:
1. If we judge others with righteousness, we will be judged with righteousness by the Lord (v. 2); if we judge others with mercy, we will be judged with mercy by the Lord; mercy triumphs over judgment—James 2:13.
2. For us to deal with others, we must reject ourselves and consider them, sym-pathize with them, and be merciful toward them; the splinter in our brother's eye must remind us of the beam in our own eye—Matt. 7:3.
3. As long as the beam remains in our eye, our vision is blurred, and we cannot see clearly—vv. 4-5.
B. We should not give that which is holy to the dogs or cast our pearls before the hogs, lest they trample them with their feet and turn and tear us—v. 6:
1. In Matthew 7:6 that which is holy must refer to the objective truth, which belongs to God; your pearls must refer to the subjective experiences, which are ours.
2. Dogs do not have hoofs, nor do they chew the cud; hogs have divided hoofs but do not chew the cud; thus, both are unclean—Lev. 11:27, 7; cf. Acts 10:1-15, 28.
3. According to the revelation in 2 Peter 2:12, 19-22, and Philippians 3:2, dogs and hogs in Matthew 7:6 refer to people who are religious but not clean.
4. When we talk to others about the truth or about our precious experience of Christ, we must perceive and determine whether or not they have the capac-ity to receive what we intend to share.
C. As we are contacting people and dealing with them, we must ask, seek, and knock for the proper way to contact them—vv. 7-8; 1 Tim. 5:1-2:
1. To ask is to pray in a common way, to seek is to supplicate in a specific way, and to knock is to demand in the most intimate and most earnest way.
2. The best way for the kingdom people to contact others is according to the kingdom and according to the Spirit—Matt. 7:9-12; cf. Luke 11:13.
3. We need to pray ourselves into God so that we may receive the riches embod-ied in His Spirit to feed ourselves and all those under our care—vv. 1-13.
4. We must learn to do everything through the cross and by the Spirit in order to min ister Christ into others for His Body—cf. 2 Chron. 1:10.
II. To live the kingdom life, the God-man life, the church life, we must be humble and not despise any believer but love our brother and forgive our brother—Matt. 18:1-35; 5:48; 7:13-14; Rom. 14:17:
A. To live the kingdom life, we must humble ourselves and become like little chil-dren—Matt. 18:2-4.
B. To live the kingdom life, we should not stumble others or set up any stumbling block—vv. 5-9; cf. 11:6.
C. To live the kingdom life, we should not despise even a little believer—18:10-14.
D. To live the kingdom life, we should forgive our brother without limit—vv. 21-35:
1. We must forgive the offending brother even seventy times seven times— vv. 21-22.
2. We must forgive others as the Lord has forgiven us:
a. Our debt to the Lord is impossible to pay off—vv. 23-26.
b. The Lord forgave our debts in our defeated Christian life for the restora-tion of our fellowship with Him—v. 27.
c. Another's debt to us is very small compared with our debt to the Lord— v. 28.
d. If we do not forgive the brother who sins against us, it will grieve the other broth ers, and they may bring this matter to the Lord—vv. 28-31.
e. If we do not forgive a brother from our heart today, we will not be allowed to enter into the kingdom in the coming age—vv. 32-35; cf. Mark 11:25-26.
III. We must see and realize that in the kingdom of God there are five kinds of forgive ness:
A. There is eternal forgiveness—this relates to life:
1. The forgiveness that comes with our salvation is eternal forgiveness.
2. Once we are forgiven, we are forgiven forever; we receive eternal life forever, and we are justified forever—Luke 24:47; Rom. 4:7-8; Psa. 103:12.
3. The moment we believe into the Lord Jesus, we are forgiven of all our sins; the Lord removes all our sins, and we are left with no trace of sin before God— Acts 10:43; Heb. 8:12.
B. There is instrumental forgiveness—this relates to the church:
1. In sending the Holy Spirit to His church, the Lord charged the church to be His repre sentative on the earth; forgiveness is now granted through the church—John 20:22-23.
2. Instrumental forgiveness is God's proclamation of forgiveness through man; if a per son is newly saved but does not know the meaning of forgiveness, it is good for a represen tative of the church to stand up and say to him, "You have accepted the Lord today; you can thank Him because He has forgiven you of your sins!"
C. There is restorative forgiveness—this relates to fellowship:
1. When we sin in our daily life, our conscience condemns us, and our fellow-ship with God is interrupted—Acts 24:16; 1 Tim. 1:5; 3:9; 2 Tim. 1:3.
2. Our Father-son relationship with God in life can never be changed, but sin can damage our fellowship with God; we have to confess our sins and offenses to God before we can secure our forgiveness in fellowship—1 John 1:7, 9; 2:1-2.
3. If we have offended our brothers, we must confess to them as well—Matt. 5:23-24.
4. We have to maintain ourselves in constant fellowship with God; when we come to God, we have to acknowledge our sinful acts honestly and ask Him for forgiveness; if we do this, our fellowship with God will be restored, and our heart will be filled with the joy of salvation—Psa. 51:12; Prov. 15:13a; 17:22a; 15:15b.
5. The secret of the Christian life is maintaining ourselves in constant fellow-ship with God; if we fail, we must ask God for forgiveness, and we must re-cover the sweet fellow ship that we had with God—1 John 1:9.
D. There is governmental forgiveness—this relates to discipline:
1. This kind of forgiveness involves God's arrangement, sovereignty, discipline, and hand; God's government is His way of doing things; it is His administra-tion.
2. God's governmental forgiveness is related to the way that God manages, rules over, and deals with us—Gal. 6:7.
3. When we sin against God, He will forgive us when we confess our sins to Him; our fellowship with Him can be restored, but He may change His way with us.
4. David confessed his sins and admitted his guilt in order to be forgiven by God (2 Sam. 12:13; Psa. 51), but God would cause the son born to Uriah's wife to die and the sword to not depart from David's house (2 Sam. 12:7-15).
5. When we are under God's governmental discipline, the only thing that we can do is learn to humble ourselves under His mighty hand (1 Pet. 5:5-7); the more we reject God's governmental hand, the more problems we will encounter.
6. After Moses struck the rock in Meribah (Num. 20:10-12, 24; 27:14), he fell under God's governmental hand:
a. In being angry when God was not angry, Moses did not represent God rightly in His holy nature, and in striking the rock twice, he did not keep God's word in His economy; thus, Moses offended both God's holy nature and His divine economy.
b. Because of this, even though he was intimate with God and may be con-sidered a companion of God (Exo. 33:11), Moses lost the right to enter into the good land.
c. In all that we say and do concerning God's people, our attitude must be according to God's holy nature, and our actions must be according to His divine economy; this is to sanctify Him.
7. We must learn to be generous to others and learn always to forgive; if we crit-icize others lightly, condemn others easily, keep com plaining about the con-duct of others, and con tinue to count the ill-treatment that we receive from them, this will bring us under God's governmental hand; if we are severe to-ward others, God will also be severe toward us—Matt. 6:15; 18:23-35:
a. We have to learn to fear God, to revere God, to respect God, to honor God, to be in awe of God—Psa. 2:11-12; 86:11; 2 Cor. 5:10-11; Isa. 11:2.
b. When others are in trouble, it is the time for us to help them, not the time for us to criticize them—cf. Gen. 14:14-16.
c. There are many brothers who have fallen miserably today for one reason only—they have criticized others too severely in the past; many of their weaknesses today are the very weaknesses that they criticized in the past.
d. We must be generous toward others if we want to avoid God's governmen-tal hand; may we learn to love and forbear one another—Eph. 4:32.
E. There is kingdom forgiveness—this relates to administration:
1. If we treat people too harshly or have an unforgiving spirit in this age, we will be disciplined in the kingdom age—Luke 6:37-38; Matt. 18:33-35.
2. If we treat others in a mean way and criticize others mercilessly, God will deal with us in the same way in the future—7:1-2.
3. May the Lord grant us the grace to be those who show mercy to others, who do not deal with others in meanness, sharpness, or severity, so that we can obtain mercy from God in that day—5:7; cf. 2 Tim. 1:16, 18.