THEME: “KINGDOM PEOPLE LIVING BY THE BOOK”
TEXT: Malachi 4:5-6; Acts 6:5 – 8
TITLE: “A KINGDOM AGENDA FOR A KINGDOM MAN”
Introduction:
1. God has called and is calling fathers and men from the church, into the community and into our homes! However, before we can become the kind of man that God is looking for and is looking to bless…we need to realize that just being a male does not qualify us for the blessings of God! It takes more than merely wearing pants with the zipper in the front and carrying your wallet in your hip pocket and being able to impregnate a female for you to become a man that God will bless!
2. The church today is growing in the number of churchmen…but God is calling for kingdom men. Listen there is a growing number of men entering the doors of the church but many men are in the church suffering from what is called the “loser’s limp.” You understand…the loser’s limp is what happens when a ball player is suppose to catch the pass that is thrown in his direction and because he misjudges the ball and missed the pass and he don’t want anyone to know that he blew it because of his own mistake, he falls down and gets up limping. It’s when the runner is going to get beat in the 100 meters or the 200 meters and see that even though he should be winning because he is favorite to win…he is getting dusted so he comes up limping with a sudden muscle pull or cramp. A loser’s limp is a way of camouflaging failure. And saints of God, we have far too many of us Christian men who are camouflaging our failure to be men of the kingdom! We give excuses. “If it were not for the way I was raised,” or “Well, my father left my mother,” or “Everybody else was doing it so…” or “If it weren’t for this woman I got.” But the fact is whatever a man’s excuses may be for failing to fulfill his agenda in God’s Kingdom, he still does not get the job done!
3. Now you need to understand, that this message is not a “player –
hating message. I come to help and to encourage Christian men to be all that God has called them to be and to live out their kingdom destiny with the faith, the power and the grace of God. I come to confront and challenge Christian men in the church to live up to their calling and destiny. God’s kingdom is desperately short of Kingdom minded men. And thank God for those Para-church groups, which are calling men to faithfulness to Christ, to family and to the church.
But the fact remains that far too many men are missing in action. 41% of all American children will go to bed without a father in the home to pray with them or to tuck them in. In the African-American community and in the Hispanic community, that figure rises to almost 65%; and by the year 2010 it is estimated that this number could climb to approximately 70%.
We must understand that throughout the Bible, whenever Satan wanted to destroy a civilization and attempt to stop the plan of God’s Kingdom, he went after the male seed. Sodom and Gomorrah perished because Satan perverted the men to lust after other men, rather than to love, cherish and marry women. In Egypt, Pharaoh wanted to kill the male Hebrew children in the time of Moses, and then there was Herod who wanted to destroy all the male children hoping to kill the “One who was born King of the Jews,” the Christ child.
Our challenge is that just like the weather was the other day foggy…there is a spiritual fog that has descended over so many men today. It is said that six city blocks worth of fog contains no more than approximately one glass of water. In other words fog is a lot of smoke but little substance. And that describes the situation we are facing in the church today…when it comes to Kingdom men. But it does not have to be that way. God has an exciting, challenging and fulfilling Kingdom Agenda for His men and I want us to do more than consider it – I want us to start walking in it and living it out in our daily lives.
I. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VISION
II. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VIRTUES AND VALUES
III. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VICTORY
I. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VISION
God is seeking kingdom men, and a Kingdom man is one who sees God’s vision for his life in the Kingdom, takes on God’s virtues and values and as a result experiences Kingdom Victory! Listen God is not hiding His will from men. God is always looking for men whose hearts are faithful toward Him. The prophet Samuel told King Saul in 1 Samuel 13:14, “The Lord has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart.” In the days of Jeremiah the weeping prophet his cry was that “There was no man who could be found faithful to the Lord.” God told Jeremiah to roam through the streets of Jerusalem and find just one man, “Who does justice, who seeks truth.”
Then God promised that if Jeremiah could find just one man, God promised that He would pardon the people and refrain the hand of their enemies. But Jeremiah could not find one man of justice and truth among the poor or the rich (Jeremiah 5:1 – 5). In Ezekiel 22:30 God says, that He was looking for a man to “Stand in the gap and make up the hedge for the city – but He found none.”
God has always been hunting, looking for faithful men. They are plenty of males, but what God wants is a man after His own heart. He wants a man who has a vision of what God can do through him as he yields to the Kingdom agenda. He wants a man who will walk in the virtues and values of the Kingdom and who will trust Him for victory in every area of life.
Now what is the Kingdom Agenda that God has given men? Well let’s look at in Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Now God included the woman in this too, because the term “man” here is the term for mankind, not just the male. But then Adam will be given the headship in his relationship with Eve, so that he is to be the servant-leader carrying out the Kingdom Agenda.
Now this is a big vision! God wants man to rule and dominate the entire earth on His behalf, as His Kingdom representative. The vision God gave Adam was a worldwide vision; its dimensions were staggering. Adam, along with Eve, was not only to rule over the earth, but he was to bear and reproduce the image of God on the earth. Now that is a Kingdom Sized Vision…that is bigger than any one man can pull off by himself. In other words God gave Adam something that was much larger than himself. God was allowing Adam the privilege to get in on what He (God) was going to do and all Adam had to do was to see the big picture and follow God.
What about you, my brother? Has God called you to do something that is far too big for you to accomplish on your own apart from His power? If so…congratulations! You have been chosen and given a Kingdom Vision! You are a special, peculiar set apart man of God! You see a lot of men are satisfied just to put in their eight hours, collect a paycheck, and go home and go fishing. God gave Adam a job, but He gave him a job so he could achieve a higher goal, a kingdom agenda. Listen, if you cannot sit down right now and articulate God’s kingdom calling on your life then something is missing in your life and you will never find fulfillment as a man without it.
Vision is the ability to see beyond the immediate and the visible. It is being able to see the big picture and the preferable future that God has planned for you. A Kingdom vision is a view of life that is larger and far bigger than just getting by day-by-day. A Kingdom vision is God’s calling that allows you to make an impact for eternity while you are here in history. A Kingdom vision is God’s calling that motivates you to impact your home for His glory, to impact your job, to impact your children’s lives, to impact your marriage, to impact your community and to impact your church…all for His Glory, that His Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven!
So brothers, listen…God has called you and me as men to something that is bigger than life itself. He has called us to set the pace and show the way in the church and ultimately in the Kingdom. And if the sum total of your life is working 48 – 60 hours a week, traveling and sleeping in hotel after hotel…running home for a day, reading the old newspapers and watching a few TV shows…don’t be surprised if your life gets boring! Even going to church in and of itself won’t make much of a difference if you are not pursuing a vision that is so big only God can give you the power to accomplish it. If you are going to be a man of the Kingdom – then you must first allow God to develop a Kingdom vision in your life.
Now the Holy Record is filled with stories of Kingdom men…but none, in my opinion, stands out any more than Stephen. His story is recorded for us in Acts chapters 6 and 7. Let’s look at this Kingdom man and glean from him what God desires from us as Kingdom men.
Stephen had a Kingdom Vision, he understood his calling in light of history and what God had already been doing in the life of Israel and what God was going to do to bring His plan and purposes to fulfillment. In Acts 7 Stephen reviewed the history of Israel and pointed out the big picture of God to those who were his accusers. He spoke with such authority and power until the bible says, “They were cut to their heart.” Notice chapter 7:51 – 54…Stephen could speak with such boldness because He understood the big picture, the vision of God’s Kingdom. He understood that he was not created simply to have a job, have a family and make money and die…but live, make a difference for the kingdom of God and then die.
II. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VIRTURES AND VALUES
Look at the virtues and the values of Stephen, a man of the Kingdom. Acts 6:3 and following shows us that the one word that emphasizes Stephen’s life is the word fullness. He was “full of the faith,” “full of the Holy Spirit,” “full of wisdom,” and “full of power.” In the Scriptures when you see the term “full of” it means, “to be controlled by.”
The compelling virtue of a Kingdom man is that something and someone other than himself control him! Faith, wisdom, power and ultimately the Holy Spirit control a Kingdom man. He is a God-controlled man, yielded to the Holy Spirit, who seeks to lead people into the Kingdom of God.
A. Full of Faith – meaning that Stephan was “faithful.” Listen you cannot be a kingdom man and not be dependable. Can God depend on you, can the church depend on you, can your wife and children depend on you and can those on your job depend on you? A Kingdom man is dependable and that makes an impact on the lives of others.
B. Full of Wisdom - meaning that Stephan was “able to apply what he knew.” Wisdom is the ability to apply that you learn. He had learned the Word of God and the grace of God and had the ability to apply it.
C. Full of Power – meaning that Stephan was a man who believed in and released the miracle working power of God through his life. He was not ashamed of God using him and manifesting Himself in strange and usual ways in order to draw people to Christ.
D. Full of the Holy Spirit – the anointing of Christ was evident in Stephan’s life. He was able to speak with the same authority and the Holy Spirit lead him to even speak as Christ spoke in his death.
III. A KINGDOM MAN HAS KINGDOM VICTORY
Listen, as a Kingdom man, if you are going to experience kingdom victory it is a must that you keep your eyes not on the challenges of life…not on the pressure of this world…not on the enemies of your mission…but on the glory of God.
The only way to taste kingdom victory is to focus on the King of Glory.
Notice Stephan’s words in 7:2, “And he said, Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory…” and then in 7:55 it says of him, “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into the heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. In verse 56 he said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
Listen, God is looking for some men like Stephan. God is looking for men of the Kingdom who can see the vision of the Kingdom and who will walk in the virtues and values of the Kingdom. God is looking for men of the Kingdom who understand that nothing can separate them from their victory in the Kingdom.
Therefore God is calling you and He is calling me to be men who will be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. God wants men who will be willing to stand when others fall by the wayside…men who will be filled with the Holy Spirit and unashamed to be counted in the number of the saints!
Men…who will preach the word in season and out of season…when folk want to hear it and when they don’t want to hear it. Men…who will seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Do we have any Kingdom Men…in the house? Men…whose wives don’t have sit up all night wondering where they are…men, whose children know that they can be counted on in the time of need!
God is looking for some Kingdom Men…who know that victory is assured…because even if they persecute you they cannot destroy you. Even if they lie on you…truth crushed to earth will rise again. Even if the scandalize you name…Kingdom men realize that there is another name…whereby every knee must bow and every tongue must confess…and thanks be to God – that they other name is not Mohammed, it is not Buhhda…Farrakhan, Bush or Kerry…but there is a King…He is the King of Glory and Stephan saw Him…
Stephan lived as a man of the Kingdom in such a way that Jesus…did sit down and receive Him in glory – Jesus stood up and gave Stephan…a standing ovation.
Well will you so live as a Kingdom Man in life and in death…in defeat and in victory…will you so live in such a way as to have Jesus standing up – cheering you on… welcoming you into His Kingdom?
