Forceful Kingdom Advance
(Matthew 11:12 NLT) “And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it.”
After sending his apprentices on their first supervised mission in Matthew 10, Jesus began expounding more principles about God’s kingdom.
Before going into detail on what Jesus says here, let’s think about what God’s kingdom is. Basically, a kingdom is the domain over which a king reigns—kingdom meaning a king’s domain, shortened to king-dom, and thus: kingdom. So God’s kingdom is the domain that God rules.
(Psalm 115:16 NKJV) The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s; But the earth He has given to the children of men.
From this passage, we see that God’s kingdom is undisputed in “the heavens.” But as the earth has been “given to the children of men,” for God’s kingdom to extend to earth, he has to reign through the humans to whom he gave the authority to rule here. If every individual on earth were fully submitted to God, then his kingdom would certainly rule here.
This explains why Jesus came to earth as God’s representative; he came to retrieve man’s domain from the hands of God’s enemy, Satan; and he came to reconcile man to God—man’s rightful King. You see, God created humans to need a father, a king, a lord. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule in their hearts, the devil deceived them into thinking they could become independent operators—in charge of their own destiny, doing their own thing.
However, man is not designed this way; that was a deception. In truth, by rebelling against God, instead of becoming their own god, they actually submitted to the spirit of rebellion; he became their god. Thus, by controlling those to whom God had delegated the authority to rule the earth, Satan became the “god of this world.” (See: John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, 2 Cor. 4:4)
Jesus was training his apprentices to “forcefully” advance the “kingdom of heaven” against the enemy’s usurped rule. That’s why he sent them with the following commission:
(Matthew 10:7–8 NKJV) “And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ( Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”
In other words, Jesus sent his delegates to forcefully advance God’s kingdom against the enemy, and to reconcile human people back to God’s rule. Jesus’s warring ambassadors were to announce, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”; and then to demonstrate it by nullifying the enemy’s kingdom fruit—sickness and disease, along with demonic infiltration and control. This is like saying, “God rules here now through us; watch this!” then casting out the enemy’s controlling operatives, and cleaning up the mess their rule had made.
Let’s look again at what Jesus said after sending his twelve on their mission:
(Matthew 11:12 NLT) And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it.
Here, the last part of what Jesus said is translated as: “violent people are attacking it.” To get to the heart of why they are fighting the advance of God’s kingdom of love, healing, and reconciliation, I like to remind myself that the violent counter attack is initiated by the demonic powers that control the world system through un-regenerated people. The “god of this world” is blinding them from reality, and inciting them to fight against God’s kingdom advance (2 Cor. 4:4 KJV). After all, the Holy Spirit said through the apostle Paul:
(Ephesians 6:12 NLT) “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”
I believe that we all need to be aware of this unseen fight. The true enemy has a strategy: he wants to remain in the “unseen” world, and to try to make us think that our fight is against “flesh-and-blood enemies.” In other words, one of the enemy’s defensive mechanisms is to have us believe that our real enemy is other humans—those who knowingly or unknowingly are controlled by him. Whereas in truth, the Holy Spirit specifically says that we are “not” fighting anyone who has “flesh-and-blood”—we are not at all wrestling human beings as we advance God’s kingdom.
To illustrate this, Jesus used John the Baptist’s example: he forcefully advanced God’s kingdom, but the enemy incited a deadly counterattack against him through Herod and Herodias (See: Mat. 14).
Both Jesus and John were spiritually aggressive; they were forcing the kingdom’s claim forward with devastating results in Satan’s realm. This could be seen in the huge crowds that came to both John and Jesus to hear God’s word, and in the repentance, healing, deliverance and freedom they received. However, the enemy forcefully retaliated with his full arsenal to try to stop them.
The reality and imminence of this war is clear from the context in which Jesus said it. It was just after John’s arrest and just prior to his beheading. Jesus also experienced enemy counterattack through the elements, constant persecution, attempts on his life, and finally, crucifixion. Throughout the forceful ministries of John the Baptist, Jesus, and later the apostle Paul, we see the constant resistance and counter attacks of the enemy.
This principle also applies to us. Jesus calls us to forcefully push the kingdom of darkness away from people’s lives. And without doubt, in Jesus’s name, under Holy Spirit anointing, and by confessing the living word, we release God’s absolute victorious authority to push the enemy back. He does have the weapons that Eph. 6:16 calls, “fiery darts” (KJV); but Jesus stripped him of his armor (Luke 11:22). Therefore, he has no defense for our weapon—the “sword of the spirit, which is the word (rhema) of God” (Eph. 6:17 KJV).
When we forcefully advance God’s kingdom through preaching and demonstration, the enemy feels it. As a result, he wants to regain his lost territory or to at lease inflict vengeful injury on us to dissuade us from doing it again. For our purposes here, we call this his counterattack.
To remind myself of this violent reality, I like to think of our key passage like this:
(Matthew 11:12) From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven forcefully advances, and the forceful try to seize it back by force.
Today, I encourage you to remember the reality of what Jesus said here. We are in a fight whether we like it or not. But it is not a fight against natural humans; our enemy is in the unseen realm. We battle him with God’s invincible armor and his indomitable weapon, the living word of God. We don’t however, get into insulting him, arguing with him, or engaging him in any form of intellectual debate; we fight and win this battle in the “fight of faith”:
(1 Timothy 6:12 NKJV) Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Note the word “confession”—our words are the central focus of the fight of faith. We need to say, and to keep on saying, only what God says. This takes discipline and a heart filled to overflowing with God’s word. To be overcomers in forcefully advancing God’s kingdom, and in neutralizing the forceful counter attacks of the actual enemy, we need constantly to be feeding on God’s word, plus …
(Revelation 12:11 NKJV) “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”
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