John the Baptist cried out to the passing crowds and many were baptized in readiness to receive the Messiah. Mark1. 2. His message was repentance, because only repentance prepares the way for the Lord’s coming into our lives.  Only repentance prepares us for his rule and kingdom. Matthew 4.17.  Obstacles of sin, rebellion, uncleanness, pride, and dead tradition are removed and we make ready a way for the Spirit’s outpouring. The kingdom and repentance are inextricably tied together.  God desires His will to be done in and through people. In fact the kingdom means: God’s rule, where Gods will in done.  Whenever a person knows the thoughts of the King and does them the kingdom is expressed. The kingdom is righteousness, its peace, its joy, is power its love, its victory over enemies, its provision for our needs, its healing for our troubled soul. Its restoration, is the heartbeat of God manifested in your life; that is why the kingdom is good news; the gospel of the kingdom. The good news is that God has purposed to bring His kingdom to earth. He said “For as truly as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.” Our challenge is to know His thoughts and then to obey them. God said in the Old Testament “My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways” but now the Holy Spirit is come to teach us His thoughts.

Friend, living in a state of repentance, soft toward Gods voice is the first step to begin to tune to His thoughts.

For a few years after I began in ministry, I struggled with doubt about my ability as a preacher.  Anneke and I went to Australia for a holiday and there God spoke to me from this verse in Philippians. “With all boldness I will be magnified in my body”.   I realized the opposite is true; that without boldness Christ will not be magnified in my body.  Too many time our effectiveness sabotaged buy wrong thinking about ourselves.  Before God begins to build in to our life He requires that we have a good foundation in our life. We can conform to the expected behavior on the outside, but have major struggles on the inside of us and people may never be aware of it.  The anointing comes to preach to the poor and to heal the broken hearted and till our hearts are healed we cannot be whole hearted. While people are still captive they are not free to be all that God want them to be and blinded by lies or the demonic they won’t be aware of who God has made them.  Many times that which God is able to do now, is limited by the degree we have opened our heart to His touch.  The past naturally affects our future. The book of Hebrews 6, states that we can only go on to maturity once the foundation has been laid.  That foundation is clearly laid out as repentance from dead works and faith towards God, then baptisms in water and in the Holy Spirit.

Friend, all of these are foundational to our growth. If you have not been baptized in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues you don’t yet have the supernatural equipment you need to face our supernatural enemies.

The prodigal son took all the good things of life; his health, his life, his energy, his privilege, his freedom and his knowledge and spent them on pleasure, possessions, popularity and fame in an effort to find satisfaction. When you don't know your Father well or you don’t know who you truly are, you’ll abuse the Fathers love. The young man was stupid but not stubborn and eventually decided to return to the blessing of his father. So he left the far off country and made the long journey home to get things right with God and man.

In the far country there seems to be the freedom to enjoy harlots, parties, drugs and waste money but it is not home.  There is still want, there's still need and it ends badly; living a life like a pig, and eating food not fit for human consumption. When you’re hungry you’ll feed on husks but when you’re starving you’ll return home to your father. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that when a man is in Christ, he finds all that he needs and becomes everything he can never become himself. The person that puts his faith in Christ as their Saviour becomes fully satisfied.

Friend, you can try your best to satisfy your hungry self, but you will realize satisfaction cannot be bought with money but can be found by returning home.

God is righteous and heaven is for the righteousness; therefore everybody in heaven must be righteous. Under the law people had to be righteous to enter paradise. Under Grace, people still have to be righteous to enter heaven.  There is no change.  In fact Jesus said except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees you could never enter the kingdom of heaven. The only thing that has changed is how we become righteous and how it is obtained.    We can now be righteous before God by faith.  It is not a lesser righteousness, but a different means to being right before God.  It's only difference is how we become righteous. Jesus is the righteousness of God and if you have Jesus and you have righteousness.   Rom 3:26  God demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. God is not indifferent to sin but holy and must condemn sin so Jesus was punished for our unrighteousness. Now our faith in the Saviour is accounted for righteousness.  Our faith justifies us – or declares to be as if we had never sinned.

Friend, it doesn’t mean we are righteous in our self nor is it legal fiction where God says we are righteousness when we are not. But we are actually righteousness in Christ or because Christ is within us, we truly are righteous.

The town was exceedingly cultured and every four years they held the Isthmus games.  The greatest prize was for rhetoric, not running and every four the came early to practice. These speakers were always young, handsome well-dressed, highly educated males.   In those times they were like film stars league stars rolled into one and they could really wow the crowd. Many of them were trained in Alexandria University of rhetoric.  So to this town Paul comes probably during the time of the games when hundreds of thousands of people dwelt in tents. Paul was a tent maker who along with Apollo gained some converts and gathered them together as a church. Of course just like all other Corinthians, they were divided and contentious having their own favorite speakers and comparing Paul and Apollo’s as preachers.  Paul says everything about what you think is wrong.   Paul says it pleases God that through the foolish message of the cross to save people and the message was foolish to the Greeks and the Romans. Roman gods were powerful vindictive and larger-than-life. The idea of a god that could be crucified was ridiculous and actually scandalous. The Romans at time never talked about crucifixion.  It was the worst taboo subject and they never wished that on the worst enemy as it was not about pain but about shame. Paul said it was a miracle you believed the gospel.  It was a ridiculous message to you; I was a ridiculous speaker to you, so it is a proof of Gods power at work!

Friend it was the power of God that saved them and it is the power of God that still saves us.

The advert for Wendy’s fast food store, says “if you come here hungry and thirsty you will always leave satisfied. ‘God has made us in a way that desires satisfaction. If we are hungry we are motivated to get satisfied.  If you are thirsty, you do what it takes to get a drink.   Imagine if you never felt hungry, so you never ate.  One day you just be too tired to get food or if you had to set phone reminders every four hours to remind you to eat.  We know this is true and not just about food. Righteousness is doing the right things, being right and doing right. If we do a job and do it right, we are satisfied.  We want to play well in the game in the weekend and when we do we are happy we are satisfied.   To a degree we can do all the above in every area of our natural life we are satisfied to a degree and for a while but we get thirsty again. The woman at Samaria had a husband but he only lasted two years so she had to find another husband.   She came to get drink but it only lasted a day. She had to come again to the well. So she was interested when Jesus said ‘if you drink the water I give you, you will never thirst again.  Jesus was not talking about natural thirst but spiritual thirst and spiritual water.  Because God has made man to have hunger and thirst  in their soul, men actually can’t be fully satisfied till  he is filled with what God made him to be filled with,  which is Righteousness. If you have a spiritual hunger and thirst you will be satisfied.  Lucifer was hungry and ambitious for position and power but it never got to be satisfied, even though he had the highest position possible in heaven.  Nebuchadnezzar King to the Babylonian empire, had every possible natural delight, he may have felt he was the coolest but he never was satisfied.

Friend, David worked out how to be really satisfied. Psa 17:15  As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.  Becoming one with God and like God in character, is the one thing that satisfies. And it is possible though the gift of Jesus to us.

Blind Bart was waiting for had waited a long time for this moment.  When he heard that Jesus was coming by, he lifted his voice above the babble of excitement from the gathered crowd, and shouted “Son of David have mercy on me.”  When Jesus stopped and healed his eyes blind, Bart immediately followed the Lord on the road.  The Son of uncleanness followed the Son of Righteousness.  So when God wants to heal the way we walk, He heals the eyes of our heart. What is important to understand is that the feet represent the condition of the heart in the disciple. The feet only follow our heart.  The Feet only go where heart has already been. So to direct our feet, He heals our heart.    God doesn’t start or finish with rules.  God doesn’t try to change the way we act, He changes our heart. Old Testament Israel, had a change of religion but they never had change of heart, till finally God the Father said “I’m going to show you My heart”. When the saw the heart of Father, revealed by Christ on the cross, their hearts were changed and their lifestyle changed. That is how our hearts are changed; by seeing the heart of God, in Christ.

Friends, God is not seeking to change our behavior but our identity, because a person with a new identity lives a new life.   A person with a new heart can and will change themselves.  

After my Mum and Dad died they left me an inheritance which was enough to put down a deposit on a new house. The deposit wasn’t the full price of the house but it did mean that we could move in begin to live in it. God gave Adam an inheritance in the garden before he sinned; a commission to bring the earth under the rule of God.  He made man in His image and told him to be fruitful and take dominion. But when Adam forsook his calling he also lost his relationship as a be­loved son and the beauty of being in God's image. He lost his inheritance, his divine covering and his destiny in God's purpose. For a while.

Now as returning prodigals we are given it all back.  Relationship, acceptance, life from dead, clothes of righteousness, a ring of authority and shoes for inheriting what God has provided. It’s fantastic but no matter how great this life is on the earth now, the greater inheritance is still to come, when the meek shall inherit the earth. Our experience of the Holy Spirit now is only a deposit. It is the first investment God makes into your life and soul, but it is only a guarantee of the full inheritance he has for us, at the redemption of our bodies when Jesus come back.

Friend, when we get to live literally in His presence, we won’t be walking by faith, we’ll be seeing Him face to face.   No more through a glass darkly but we will be perfectly known by him. In eternity, He will show us the full inheritance of His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Adam and Eve had two boys. They grew up in a relatively pristine and beautiful world together but there was something ugly in someone’s heart. Cain rose up and killed his brother Able and Abel’s’ blood cried out from the ground. Gen 4:7  If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."... And it happened when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where is your brother Abel? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? Dumb question. Sin makes you stupid! And He said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground. And now you are cursed more than the ground which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. God said to Cain your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.  (Thankfully Jesus blood speaks better things. It wasn’t blood spilt by the brother but it was blood spilt for the brothers.) This is the first mention of brother in the Bible and also the first mention of sin, which was revealed as an attitude toward a brother. Of course the whole Bible teaches that our love for our brothers is the gauge of our actual love for God. 1 John 4.20.

God spoke. “When you till the ground, it will not again give its strength to you. And you shall be a vagabond and a fugitive in the earth.  And Cain said to Jehovah, My punishment is greater than I can bear.  Behold! You have driven me out from the face of the earth today, and I shall be hidden from Your face. Gen 4:8 -14.

The Lord told Cain that because the ground was polluted with his brother’s blood, it would no longer produce the fruit he expected.  The way we treat your brother will determine the fruit of our field. God said you will be driven from the face of the ground and from the face of God. This is also the first mention of the face of God. The way you treat your brother determines the availability and vision of God’s face. This idea of brotherly responsibility is right through the Bible. As the people approached the Promised Land, the Reubenites and Gadites wanted to stay on the far side of the Jordan where there was less fighting to be done.  But God said you will go over with your brothers and ensure they enter their inheritance before you can settle down to enjoy yours. God’s requirement is no one can inherit their land unless all the brothers inherit their land. Jos 1:14-16.  Like the three Musketeers: one for all and all for one   That’s brotherhood.  God withholds our full inheritance until we have helped our brothers into theirs.  This is reflected in Hebrews “let us go on to perfection”- no one goes on to maturity alone. Many years earlier, Joseph had been sold to the Egyptians by his brothers.  Eventually he was promoted to the ruler of the land at the same time a famine came upon Israel. His brothers were sent to find bread from the Egyptian ruler and when they arrive Joseph asks his unsuspecting brothers “Do you have a father or a brother?  And we said to my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one. And his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother, and his father loves him. And you said to your servants, Bring him down to me, and let me see him. And we said to my lord, The boy cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, he would die. And you said to your servants, Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall see my face no more. Gen 44:19 -23. Joseph is a type of Christ. He is the beloved son rejected by his brothers, falsely accused, sentenced with two offenders but is finally exalted to rule. Joseph had bread for his brothers and he is most interested to meet the need of all his brothers.  When asked if they had other brothers, they told him they had one at home with their father and Joseph said you will not see my face until your brother be with you. Jesus our brother also has bread for His brothers; food which can keep us alive and bring us into our destiny, but it seems that Jesus attitude is like that of josephs - something of His face and glory will not be seen till we bring our brothers with us.

Friends, we can seek His favour and His face but he says “bring your brother.” We can seek fruitfulness in the field but He says “Where is your brother?” We can seek bread; He says “bring your brother with you.”  It seems we cannot completely have our inheritance until our brother has his. Are our relationships with our fellow church leaders or members suitably unselfish and inclusive?  Is there a brother or sister that you need to go and bring? He asks us this question “Where is your brother?” because the brother left behind was the brother that the father loved.