The Parable Of Influence Series

It is here. It is in your midst. It's the sphere of salvation. It's the redeemed who are living under the command of their king. You can't see it. There aren't going to be marching armies that you can see. That is why I preached 4 weeks on our awareness of spiritual blindness. There aren't going to be any trumpets blown until the trumpet sounds to call us home to the Kingdom. It is a small, tiny, little seed hidden that once you grasp in your life it will grow and grow and grow. The problem is we have many that are coming to church looking for something big, when the what they need to do is look within themselves, find the heart of repentance, and enter into the Kingdom of God.

Look at Israel. Israel was so obscure. It is this feeble little nation. It's been overrun, abused, scorned, attacked, threatened with annihilation, the Jews have been persecuted and persecuted to the point that they have been nearly wiped off the face of the earth. By all rights they should not be in existence, but yet they are. Not because they are a powerful nation in the world, but that they live under the blessing of God. And to that end it is a shrub so big that the birds of the air nest in its branches.

If a man should go about and utter wind and lies, saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” he would be the preacher for this people! 12 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the remnant of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture, a noisy multitude of men. (Micah 2:11–12)

Get ready Israel. The one described in chapter 53, the suffering servant who dies and is risen again is going to come back and reign. Get ready to expand the kingdom. All Israel's going to be gathered.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, (Micah 4:1)

Chapter 5 of Micah, the same thing: He's coming from Bethlehem. He's coming, the One who is from eternity. He will arise and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God. He's going to reach out to Assyria, the land of Nimrod. He's going to conquer our enemies. He's going to gather the remnant of Jacob like dew. He's going to destroy enemies.

They looked at the kingdom in that perspective and here is all of this? But Jesus says that's not how it starts. That's how it ends. The consummation of the kingdom will be amazingly out of proportion to the beginning. Dear friends, this is powerful prophecy by the way. This is powerful prophecy.

The foolish people who say, “Well Jesus' mission went astray, and He got killed for trying to be the Messiah, He made a noble attempt at it, but obviously He never was able to fulfill it,” have to explain the external development of Christianity to now being the largest religion on the planet. It's going to grow out of all proportion to its beginnings. He was saying to the disciples, guys you're just seeing the start of this. Think of the mustard seed. Think of how little it is. Think of it being hidden so nobody can see it.