Qualifying for Kingdom Dominion Part Four

THE KINGDOM OF GOD -Part 60 - by J. Preston Eby

To Jesus, the firstborn Son of God, the Kingdom of God was the most precious thing in the universe and possessing the reality of it was of all things most valuable. Repeatedly He made it clear that the Kingdom had a worth which was above all earthly things and standards. He admonished, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God..." He said, "If your eye causes you to miss the mark, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be swallowed up of death." He spoke many parables about the value of the Kingdom. He said that once there was a man who was digging in a field; as he dug his spade struck across a buried treasure. It was the law of Israel that such finds might be kept by the finder; and so the man went away and sold every single thing that he possessed in order that he might buy the field and so possess the treasure. He said that once there was a merchant man who had spent his whole life searching for lovely pearls. At last he found a pearl which was the most perfect and beautiful pearl he had ever seen; so, when he found it, he went and sold out his whole stock and everything he had in order to buy the one precious pearl. It is that way, said Jesus, that a man must be about the Kingdom! To inherit the power and the glory of the Kingdom is worth everything that a man possesses and all that a man is; and if anything hinders a man from inheriting it, even if that thing is the dearest thing on earth, it must be rooted out and thrown away.

Only the spiritually ambitious man will lay hold upon the Kingdom of God. Note -- I do not say merely "ambitious," but spiritually ambitious. To be spiritually ambitious is to earnestly desire God's best -- in His way and time, according to His purpose, and always and only for His glory. It means to seek first the Kingdom of God in all things. It means to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul and strength. It means to come only to do the will of the Father, and to do only what we see the Father doing. To be spiritually ambitious is the very spirit of sonship! There is a place for ambitious men in the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, "Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all." He did not turn the man away from the ambition to be great. He simply told him how greatness can be achieved -- become the servant of all! And then there are degrees of this greatness. If you want to be great, be "the servant of all." If you want to be first, be "the bond-slave of all." The servant and the bond-slave represent degrees of self-giving, and they, in turn, represent degrees of greatness attained, namely "great" and "first." Beyond that is a level to which Jesus Himself had attained. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." In other words, since He went deeper than being servant of all, or a bond-slave of all, in that He gave His very life, so He becomes the Son of man, which is more than being great, or

first, among a group -- it is the acme of being! So the door is open for ambition. You may be least, or less, or great, or greater, or greatest, or first, or one like unto the Son of man!

Yet, it does not mean that we give in order to get -- that is not the Kingdom of God at all! We do not put on humility and serve others with the motive of becoming great, attaining to exalted positions of power and honor. If we are serving to gain advantage, to receive a position of authority over others, for the sake of authority, then our motive is all wrong -- yet carnal, earthly, sensual and devilish. That is not how the Kingdom works! We do not serve to be made great -- we serve because we are great with God's greatness. This is not a position of exercising power over others but of serving them. Serving is the power and the greatness. The motivation of our desires must be the same as that of the Captain of our salvation. Filled with the great love of God, the desire to attain to this position is to give ourselves in sacrifice and service for the deliverance and restoration of the rest of God's creatures. Having attained to this deliverance from the bondage of corruption as the firstfruits of the creation, our only desire will be to labor together with the Lord in the deliverance of the rest of His creation, to lift them up to the same level of life as He has lifted us. The heart of God, the heart of unconditional and unlimited love and all goodness, is the greatest heart in the universe. It is not serving that makes us great, it is true divine greatness that causes us to serve! Oh, the mystery of it!

Let us see how beautifully Jesus taught this by His own example. Everything is prepared and set in order for the last supper, to the very water to wash the feet of the guests, as their custom was. Christ and His disciples gather in the upper room to eat and fellowship together on this solemn night. Each one waits for the other, for there is no servant available to perform the customary service of washing the guest's feet. Washing feet was one of the basest tasks in the culture of Jesus' day. It was a job usually done by a house slave. Just as we offer a visitor hospitality, so in Jesus' time they customarily washed a visitor's feet. Washing feet was an undesirable responsibility: the roads were dusty well enough. But the filth of the road was more than dust. The transportation of that day was the camel, the donkey, the horse and the mule. It takes little imagination to understand that the streets and roads were littered with their manure. The traveler's feet would be covered with this as well as being caked with dust. The washing of feet was assigned to the lowliest slave because it meant handling the filth of the streets. This job was thought to be below the dignity of the "good man of the house."

Not one of the twelve thinks of humbling himself to do the job, for, are they not the honored ones, the disciples of the very Son of God, the flaming evangelists of the Kingdom, the future rulers of the world! Even at the table they were full of the thought -- who should be greatest in the Kingdom that was then beginning to dawn. Suddenly, unexpectedly Jesus stood up from the table, and began to take off His inner layer of garments until He was stripped to the waist, wearing only His loincloth. He then took a large towel and wrapped it around Himself, poured water into a large brass basin, and, beginning with one of the men at the end of the table, laid heavy emphasis upon His words of a few moments before, "I am in the midst of you as one that serves." Oh, the wonder of it! on which angels gazed with adoring wonder. Christ, the Creator and King of the universe, at whose word all worlds and galaxies flooded the infinity of space, who might with one word have compelled any man or legions of angels to do His bidding, Himself chose the slave's place as His own, taking the soiled, filthy feet in His own holy hands, and washes them. It was to this task that the Lord of Glory stooped!

But listen more carefully to the divine why and how of this wondrous spectacle. Jesus does it in the full consciousness of His divine glory, for the apostle John records, "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, rose..." What a startling combination of sublime cause with curious consequence! How could Jesus have done this? How could the Master and the King of the universe wash dung from His disciple's feet? He could do it because HE WAS SECURE IN WHO HE WAS. He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands. He knew that He had come from the Father and that He was the Son of God and the promised Messiah. He knew that He was going back to the Father after He defeated sin, sickness, death, the grave and hell. He didn't have to prove anything to Himself or to anyone else. His life had already proven who He was to those who had eyes to see. And He didn't stoop so low to become a tyrant, to rule over this world by force. He came to heal and bless and deliver, to reign by serving! Ah, yes, precious friend of mine, once we thoroughly know who we are there is no need to proclaim it, no need to sound a trumpet, no need to wear a badge, to remind people of who we are. Once we know that we are the sons of God WE ARE FREED TO SERVE!

You see, it wasn't in spite of the fact of His greatness that Jesus took the place of the servant -- it was because of His greatness! The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of the Father's heart. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of divine love and humility. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of sonship! For the hands into which the Father gives all things nothing is common or unclean. Because one is the offspring of the God of all grace, compassion, love, mercy and goodness, in whose hands all things are given, it is not difficult for him to stoop so low. In this taking the form of a servant, Jesus proclaims the divine order of the Kingdom of God and the house of sons. The higher one stands in attainment in the Kingdom, the more it must be his joy to be servant of all. "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Mat. 20:27). "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant" (Mat. 23:11). The higher I rise in the consciousness of being like Christ, the deeper shall I stoop to serve the creation around me. The reason why we so often do not bless others is that we wish to appear to them as their superiors in blessing, calling or rank, or at least their equals. But that is not the spirit of sonship! The truth is that only as a son can we truly be a servant. It was the Son of God who assumed the form of a servant and humbled Himself. Ah, beloved elect of the Lord, walk among men as a son of the Most High God. A son of God is only in the world to show forth his Father's glory, to demonstrate how Godlike and how blessed it is to live only and always to find a way to love, bless, redeem and restore God's lost creation. Someone has said, "God has three sorts of servants in the world: some are slaves, and serve Him from fear; others are hirelings, and serve for wages; and the last are sons, who serve because they love."

To be continued...