Becoming the greatest of all

Pastor Bill Johnson – Becoming the greatest of all


Worshippers have the privilege to summon nations into their destinies. Worshippers have a place before the Father where we not only worship Him but we turn and we summon nations into their purposes.
God is not looking for us to curse nations, to bring about judgment, to curse people groups, sinners etc. He is looking for us to see through His eyes of mercy and summon and call nations into their destinies. In heaven we will be able to see every effect of every dollar you ever gave. You will see in heaven every lives that were touched because of what you did, you will see the effect of every word, every act of kindness, the domino effect as you lay down your life for Christ and the impact it have on eternity. In that day, that is all that is going to matter to us. Is what we did with the time that we had.
Jesus met with His disciples and was able to send them out 2 by 2 to their own cities. We are going to look at His training methods. He was a different kind of trainer than most of us realized so I want to talk to you about that because I’m looking at our great army that I believe God is raising up to impact the course of world history not just the history of your nation.

Matthew 10:7
7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 7 And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.
Fairly often people will come to me and say “Bill will you pray for me?” “Well of cause what would you like for me to pray for you?”
“I just want to know God’s will for me in my life”
“You already know God’s will for your life. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.”
“What I meant was should I be a school teacher or a missionary?”
“Well just pick one then heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons”
“Well I don’t know whether I should get married?”
“Well just get married then heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons.”
It’s funny because you can go to Bible school all over the world and you can be trained in music, you can be in leadership, you can be trained in economics, you can be trained in apologetic, you can trained in a thousand different things and never take a class on how to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. I don’t mean that to be trained in music, leadership etc aren’t important well I think they are valuable but they can’t be more important than what Jesus said to do. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons, that is what He said to do.

There are many people who think that well that is the job of the apostles but Jesus trained them.
How many of you believe that Jesus is training them in this verse how to do what He do. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead and cast out demons?

In Matthew 28, after He died and rose again. He met His disciples and said “Now I want you to train your followers, your disciples the same things I taught you” What does that mean? There is no end to the training of generations to walk in the authority and power that the Lord Jesus raised up His disciples to walk in. That means you are designed for the realm of the miraculous as much as Peter was, as much as Paul was.

The uniqueness of a person’s call doesn’t mean they are either qualified for miracles or not. The uniqueness of a call has more to do with how the miraculous is expressed not if the miraculous is expressed.
Once God put the Holy Spirit in you, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of resurrection. Once the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead takes residences inside of you, all of heaven position itself to see what you will conquer in His name. The Holy Spirit is in you and He wants out. The Holy Spirit is in you like a river, rivers flow. He is not in you like a lake, He is not this still body of water. He is like a rushing torrent of water that is looking to shape the cause of history, alter the geography around you. There is this partnership between heaven and earth to release presence to alter history and impact people’s lives. This is our privilege that is why you are alive.
So the Spirit of the Lord took up residence in you and Jesus said heal the sick. Now please notice He didn’t say pray for the sick, He said heal them. But Bill we don’t heal the sick God does. I know. He just didn’t say that. But Bill it’s impossible for us to heal the sick. I believe that too. The problem is we think the rest of the Christian life is actually possible. We have been called, summoned into a family who’s primary assignment is to live the impossible, it’s not just about healing the sick and raising the dead. Have you ever read the verse Jesus said “be perfect as I’m perfect” Who knows without God’s help that one is impossible too. In fact the entire Christian life is impossible. Welcome to the impossible family. It is not normal for a Christian to not to have an appetite for the impossible, it’s in your DNA. It’s the way the Lord made you. You either have to have that bad teaching or disappointing experience, that is the only way you can be robbed of the passion for the impossible because everyone who is born again have that exact same DNA as the one who died in our place and was resurrected. The DNA of Christ defines who you are and what your nature is. Jesus ruined every funeral He attended, including His own. You can’t expect to send the Spirit of resurrection somewhere and not expect something to happen.

Luke 9
Is where we read some of the details of Jesus sending His team out-His disciples. Sometimes we almost deify these 12 mans and they are so practical that we should be able to relate to all of us.
Luke 9:1
9 Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases.
Jesus brought the disciples into His own realm of power and authority and He let them share it. He gives them power and authority. I want you to realize is that after He died, He let them know they have to get their own power and authority and so He reappeared after the resurrection and commissioned them. The commission releases authority. Then He said “you need to stay in Jerusalem till you get power and authority from on high”. The baptism of the Holy Spirit came in acts 2, that’s where they got power.
The point is this. Authority comes in the commission. Power comes in the encounter. If you want a greater anointing, you’ll want a greater encounter with the anointed One.

2 He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
6 So they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.
10 And the apostles, when they had returned, told Him all that they had done. Then He took them and went aside privately into a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida.

Now here is what I want you to see. Here are 3 stories. In the culture of North America, we tend to over train people. We are very focused on giving people knowledge and not experience. Jesus would emphasize constantly throughout scripture. In fact we ‘ve just read a passage. Where the disciples talked to Jesus and they tell Him according to Mark’s gospel, all they have done and all they have taught. Those 2 realms, teaching and doing are supposed to run parallel courses.

Let me illustrate it. You can go to business school in my country, be trained in business, get a degree and never sat under the instruction of anyone who have ever own a business. Because the educational system of the world is shifting to value concept and thought over experience and that is not kingdom.
Jesus actually sent untrained, unqualified people into the battle. Fishermen, people who really had no sense for going out there to shape the course of history. They wouldn’t be qualified in any of our schools or denominations or whatever there might be.

Jesus’ training method is so foreign to most Christian culture in the world right now so that is what I’m wanting to address. I’m wanting to invite you into a learning process with the Lord as a church and as individuals and it’s quite fun and quite scary.

46 Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest. 47 And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him, 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great.”
How many of you understand that discipline is vital to the Christian life? In Hebrews it says if you are not disciplined, if you don’t endure discipline, you’re not a child of God. It’s actually evidence that you are a son, that you are disciplined by the Lord. But we often times, we look at God the same way as we look at earthly fathers who disciplines us and nothing can be further from the truth. Jesus talks about this concept of discipline in john 15

The True Vine
15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away;[a] and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
What does it tells us? God rewards all growth with pruning. So He says this every branch that bears fruits He prunes.
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
The word prune and the word clean is the same 2 words. So what is He saying? Every branch that bears fruits He prune, but you are pruned already because of the word I spoken to you. God prunes us by talking to us. People will often avoid the word of the Lord. Jonah did, he avoided the word of the Lord for his calling. What happens when you avoid God’s voice, you run into a conflict and people look at the conflict and you say well God is disciplining me. No. You ran into the conflict because you avoided discipline. The discipline was His word to you. No one has ever being punished into purity. No one ever become holy because they were punished enough. Somehow we have this concept that punishment is a huge part of God disciplining and training. That’s not biblical and not true. It’s not the way that Jesus worked with 12 extremely unqualified guys and now we get to the first story. Jesus sends them out to ministry, they come back, meet together at a private place and they had a conversation and Jesus listens to them talk and they were arguing I’m greater than you, no I’m greater than you. That’s got to be a weird conversation for Jesus to be listening to. You can just imagine. What’s the context? Their ministry experiences in their home towns.so probably when they went something like this. Peter is talking and says you know things happened in my hometown that is quite similar to the way Jesus ministers. I speak this very humbly but I need you guys to know that I’ve the anointing very similar to the Master Himself. John just sitting there and going “Oh Peter, get over yourself. If you had been with me you would have realized that the power of resurrection was all over me as we saw things happened in my hometown” and they were all arguing to as to who is the greatest.

The concept is how they were used in the ministry in their hometown. I don’t know about your culture but in my culture we don’t sit down with each other and say I’m greater than you. The way in our culture we do it is we don’t say I’m better than you, we just criticize another person. And what is being said by criticizing somebody else is I’m better than you. Jesus looks at these 12 disciples and does this. Takes a child and puts next to Him and says “guys this is greatness” Now this is too simple of a moment, it’s too easy to read through these stories and think well this is entertaining and not realizing what is happening. Jesus is looking at a group of guys who bear some fruits that are really good. Here’s their branch, their branches grows out and they have fruits like these. They have breakthroughs in their hometowns, they obeyed the Lord, they did exactly He said, they preached the sermons, they took the risks and they bore beautiful fruits but the branches is getting kind of weird. It has grown out here and they actually think they are better than each other. So Jesus in His mercy says “Hey guys I want you to watch something. Here we need to prune these branches back and I need to do it because you were so successful and it’s amazing in what you did. I love it, I’m happy with you and we are going to prune this branch back, right here. You see this child and He prunes the branch. What did He do? He redefines greatness for them.
Here’s the funny thing. Notice that Jesus never rebukes them for wanting to become great. What is Jesus doing? Somehow He is creating an atmosphere that they actually think they can become something significant. Religion tries to kill that. Kingdom tries to define it. Religion tries to kill anybody’s passion to have significance. Why? Because we are filled with people who are self-centered, egotistical, they think they are better than others and we react to that false standard not realizing God has put a sense of significance in every one of His kids. Religions kills that passion for greatness and kingdom redefines so that we can pursue it correctly.
What does Jesus say to do it? He says you see this child. This is greatness. In another words you want to be at be at the top then you need to go to the bottom. You want to receive? Make sure that you give all. He redefines biblical greatness. Look at the next story.

Luke 9:49
49 Now John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.”
50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”
John is in the group and he has something to say which he thinks Jesus is really going to like. It goes something like this-“Jesus I saw those group of folks over here and they were casting out demons, they were using your name. Can you believe it? They are not even in our club, they are not even in our group, they don’t belong to the inner team of important people so I just told them to knock it off, you guys stop there, you don’t have the right in using that name”. He was expecting Jesus to go “oh John I really like your passion for the team”. There’s a misunderstanding of loyalty. We sometimes use worldly definitions for kingdom principles. Honor and loyalty are huge.

What was John doing? He’s displaying loyalty but the wrong kind of loyalty because in the kingdom you never display loyalty to one and prove it by rejecting another. That’s secular loyalty, that is not godly loyalty. That is of this world, it is demonic in nature. Kingdom loyalty allows me to have a spiritual Father whom I’m totally devoted to and I celebrate all this other influences that are in my life. I don’t have to reject them to show loyalty to this one.
John here is wanting to get rid of any social group that is not associated with them. What does Jesus do? It’s like Jesus is saying “alright John you’ve got this beautiful branch here and you are growing fruits because you’ve got passion for the team, you’ve got passion for loyalty, you have the value for deliverance done correctly and I want to honor that. We’ve got part of the branch here that is growing pretty well so we are going to prune it this way and this is what He says “If he is not against us, he is for us” and then He prunes the branch so that it can bear more fruits. He doesn’t want the branch growing out differently because it’s not going to bear fruit, it’s going to grow in directions God is not intending. And so He brings us a word and He trims it. This is how He deals with you this is how He deals with me. He is a wonderful Father who continuously enhances who we are becoming.
Do you know what happens when God gives you a promise? God goes into your future He grabs the word that is necessary to get you there and He gives you the promise. He deposits that word in you at this point because He’s seen where you are going and He brings the word of the Lord to qualify you, equip you, to prune, to trim so that you can actually reach the destination He has designed for you.

Luke 9:51-56
51 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. 53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”[e]
55 But He turned and rebuked them,[f] and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”[g] And they went to another village.
This is fascinating. Imagine yourself sitting in a group and James and John are a little bit irritated because the city of the Samaritans did not receive them gladly and John leans over to Jesus and said “with Your permission Lord, we would like to kill the entire city in Jesus name of cause, we give You all the glory” This got to be the funniest moment in the disciples’ history. There are 2 things that is funny, one is that they actually think they can pull this off. What was it about their meetings they just had in their home towns that Jesus just nods His head and they would call down fire to kill the entire city. Secondly, they thought this might actually be the heart of God. In my translation it says “Permit us to call down fire just as Elijah did” they even had a Bible reference. Sometimes we missed what God is saying because we are so committed to what He said. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, as he drew his sword God said “No” I’m sure Isaac was very happy his father kept listening.
Faith doesn’t come from having heard, it comes from hearing. Faith is a present tense expression of one who hears from God. You are designed to be a hearer. I don’t care if you do it poorly it’s still a gift every believer has.
So here’s James and John, they’ve got this wonderful idea we will like to kill the entire city in Jesus name and we give you all the glory. I got to be honest with you. This kind of story seems so foreign to us because it’s so weird, we read it in Bible and forget some of its impact.
Jesus got this group of guys who wants to call down fire. What does Jesus do? No.1 Jesus rebukes them and says you don’t know what matter of spirits you are of. Do you know what He is saying? He is saying you have to go to a different spirit to get that anointing because that is no longer what we are doing. In the Old Testaments there were judgments of such nature to reveal the severity of sin and the New Testament, there’s supposed to be an outpouring of Spirit not destruction. Because it is time to reveal His love. It’s time to reveal the Father. I don’t know why there is so many people scattered all around the planet that are still trying to call down fire on cities in Jesus name. They never get the lesson that Jesus tries to release to His own disciples. I’m not doing that anymore, I came to give life, I didn’t come to destroy people’s lives. How many understand? That is not complicated. It may be challenging but its not complicated concept.
So here we got Jesus empowering 12 guys to change the world. Here’s the bizarre thing. He’s meeting with these 12. These are the 3 things that come out after their successful ministry trip. He blessed them and they went out to preach and they bring back fruit, they started arguing about who’s the greatest , they start rebuking people that are outside of the group and they finally want to call down fire and kill an entire city. And this is the fruit of their success in ministry.

Most of us would consider this a failed attempt at training 12 guys. It’s not working well, let’s try something else. Let’s sit them in a classroom and make them work really hard with their brains. At least it would keep them out of trouble.

Luke 10:1
After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also,
That’s funny. From God’s perspective, it was so successful He just brought seventy more under the team.
Here’s the deal. The Lord is not nervous about selfishness coming to the surface into one of His children’s hearts. Why? Because He prunes.

Grace creates an atmosphere where things come from the heart to the surface so that is can be addressed, so it can be spoken to. Religion keeps us controlled so that we’ll never have those kinds of arguments as to who is the greatest. We never have people thinking they can control who comes to Jesus, who works for Him. This people I told them to knock it off. We never have people have those kinds of things come into their hearts. There are many people who creates religious system to prevent the possibility of there ever being a Judas but the system you create to prevent a Judas from arising is the same system that never allows for a Peter or a John to take their place in shaping world history. Grace is the environment. The answer is not control the answer is look what happened here, these people were together and Jesus had the freedom to speak into each one of their lives about the things that were wrong. That attitude about you being the greatest that’s just really a poor idea , that’s not going to work well for you. You see this child I’ve got here. From My perspective this is how I measure greatness. The simplicity of childhood models greatness for Me. So what is He doing? He is recalibrating, He’s resetting their hearts to anchor themselves into heaven’s values which is what? Humility is greater than pride. Being low is greater than being high. Emptying yourself is better than filling yourselves. All these things is recalibrating their focus. Why? Because He is training them to shape the course of history. He’s about to leave everything into the hands of 12 guys, 1 is going to kill himself so 11 guys. He’s about to leave it all into the hands of 11 mans who thinks they are better than the other, they don’t want to let somebody else to associate with them and any cities they have problems with, they want to kill everybody. This is the group He is about to pass the baton onto so they can carry this kingdom ministry all over the world. So He’s got a little bit of pruning to do.

James and John wants to call down fire to burn down the entire city and Jesus says “ you know this branch you’ve got there , that’s a pretty wild branch, that’s growing in places I really don’t want to see it grow but I like the fact that you’ve got passion and zeal. We are going to prune this branch back to this point because you have to go to a different spirit to get that anointing. I didn’t come to destroy people I came to save them. And all He does is recalibrate their hearts to His values. He didn’t send them home, He didn’t say you can’t preach anymore, He didn’t say I don’t trust you anymore to pray for the sick. He just said listen it doesn’t work the way you think so let’s change the way you think.

This makes me feel ok I can do this. I can’t do a lot of what I saw when I was growing up and I grew up in a great home, in a great church. This standard of a miracle lifestyle is something I couldn’t do. I couldn’t stand before thousands, I didn’t have the gifting, the courage. There’s a lot of stuff it seems to take but when I see these guys trying and doing these stupid stuff after they are successful I think I can do that, I can do stupid stuffs and as long as He talks to me I’m ok. It’s so practical yet it gets forgotten in the process of trying to accomplish great things for God. What is it to accomplish great things for God? It is to be a lover of God. It is to have everybody under your influence be able to rest because of your love for God. People should be able to dream because you put them at ease. Children filled with stress no longer dream. Children who are free in their family, in their household they don’t live under the kind of stress that they worry about the next meal, things of that nature. They are able to dream and no child ever dreams of being insignificant.

I want the effect of my life to put people at rest in God so that they have the freedom to dream. I don’t want to have to dictate what they need to do. I want them to dream, to discover what God put in their hearts. God puts stuff in every one of our hearts.

Grace empowers people. We want our people to rule with the heart of a servant and to serve with a heart of a king. To rule with a heart of a servant, realizing that any position of authority that God have put us in is only because we have the privilege of empowering people around us allowing them to become all that God meant for them to be and it’s also to want that same group of people to serve with a heart of a king. What does that mean? That as a servant role I’ve got a towel over my arm and I’m going to serve you but I’m going to serve you with the realization I’ve access to unlimited resources to impart to you and to impact the course of your life. This is who we are.
We had foster children, children without parents live in our home for a season. I’ll never forget the first few days they were with us when we sat at the table to eat as a family. They were in abusive home, they didn’t have food all the time, they had a mom and a dad who both killed themselves. And now they are in our home and when the food was put at the table, they grabbed everything they could and they began to take over the food. Why? Because all they know is they may not eat again. That’s how orphans act. Jesus came to reveal the Father to an orphaned planet so they no longer have to fight for myself. I become free to dream so that others around me can become healthy because I’m free. I’m free in Jesus. I’m free to think, I’m free to dream, I’m free to hope, I’m free to believe, I’m free to give myself away. Why? Because I don’t live out of insecurity. Insecurity is security exposed.

Children don’t get a junior Holy Ghost. There is no economy model of God. He only comes large. Because of that becoming like a child becomes very appealing. A child comes to the table knowing there will always be food tomorrow; I don’t have to fight for myself.
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy. The testimony where He has done it in the past is a prophetic word that He wants to do it again.

In God’s autobiography, He wrote of Himself “Nothing is impossible with God” All of creations have limitations and restrictions. God knows no impossibility. Then it is like He said everything I’ve made have limitations and restrictions but I want to give those made in my image access to the unlimited nature of My own Person so I’m going to add to My clause and say nothing is impossible to those who believe. It’s like the Lord is saying come on up higher, I want you to know what it is like to look at problems with no fears, to look at challengers with no insecurities what so ever. The person with the most hope have the most influence.